A Brief History of the Task Force

The Lynn Health Task Force is a consumer advocacy group concerned about health care access, services, and health planning in the Greater Lynn area. The Task Force has been in existence and actively involved in health care advocacy for more than seventeen years. The diverse membership includes community activists, representatives of community based organizations, union members, and representatives of health care providers and social service agencies. Over the years the Task Force has organized community opposition and participated in regulatory proceedings on the closure of Lynn Hospital, successfully advocated for translation services at Union Hospital (then owned by AtlantiCare), and organized a community process to advocate for community benefits at AMC. In addition, the Task Force has been involved, in conjunction with Health Care For All and other advocacy groups, with statewide campaigns, including opposition to hospital rate deregulation, and support for the expansion of Medicaid, free care, and children’s health benefits. The Task Force was honored with Health Care For All’s "For the People, Against the Tide" award in 1993. In 1998, the Task Force was named Volunteer Group of the Year by the Dept. of Mental Health. The Task Force was honored by Congressman John Tierney for 15 years of Health Advocacy in the Lynn Community.

Most recently, the Task Force has become active in the area of hospital community benefits and in the merger of AtlantiCare with Partners Health Care System. In 1996 the Task Force prepared extensive comments on AtlantiCare’s Community benefits report, met with representatives of the Attorney General’s Office about the community benefits process and hosted a forum for Lynn residents to participate in identifying health care issues in Lynn. When AtlantiCare later proposed to sell or merge with another hospital system, the Task Force played a central role in ensuring that the community had a voice in the decisions that were made. It secured commitments from the successful merger partners, North Shore Medical Center and Partners Health Care System, that they would provide resources to improve health care in Lynn and then negotiated specific agreements with them. These agreements were approved by the Public Health Council of DPH and were enforceable conditions of AtlantiCare’s license transfer. The conditions include mandates for hospital resources to support more physicians in Lynn, new hospital staff for interpretation, outreach, and domestic violence, community participation in governance and financial and organizational support for community based services, including education and outreach on new health programs and free care, HIV, teen pregnancy, mental health and substance abuse, and transportation.

The Task Force continues to work on a joint process with the hospitals to implement the agreements on these issues. The Task Force, Union Hospital, and the Lynn Community Health Center has successfully worked on a Free Care and Mass Health Campaign to sign up uninsured Lynn residents. This is an on-going campaign which Congressman John Tierney recognized with an award for the community and providers working together. The Lynn Health Task Force is represented on the Attorney General’s Community Benefits Task Force. The Task Force continues to work on identifying community health needs. There is also a new project called Building Community Power, which will not only build the Task Force’s membership base, but will make the Task Force even more representative of the community.