Sen. Maria Cantwell tours health facilities in rural northeast Washington to highlight need for services

U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell visited health care providers in northeast Washington last week to figure out ways the federal government can help pay for needed services.

“This is an important part of our state, very unique, beautiful part of our state, and they are making some great things happen,” she said of her stops in Colville, Republic and Omak on Friday.

Cantwell stopped by NEW Health Colville Medical first, where she toured the facility and discussed its needs and future federal funding opportunities.

The NEW Health building opened in 2023 and houses behavioral health care services, a laboratory and a pharmacy, and was partially financed with funding from the American Rescue Plan, which Cantwell supported through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Desiree Sweeney, chief executive officer at NEW Health, led the tour of the facility and the presentation afterwards where they talked about their progress and the NEW Health University – a unique approach to create professional pathways for rural youth and community members.

“In the fall of 2021, we launched NEW Health University – a comprehensive workforce development program that has six components on the wheel, and we do on-the-job training. So we do medical assistants, medical assistant pre-apprentices, which captures the high school students in their senior year to give them exposure to healthcare careers,” Sweeney said.

The program doesn’t charge the qualified candidates and doesn’t require a student or a possible applicant to have prior knowledge of the training for which they’ve applied.

The trainee would also have to agree to a two-year employment commitment with NEW Health after completing the program.

“I think what people in Colville are doing is like a national approach that people don’t realize the cost-benefit analysis of investing in people regionally,” Cantwell said after the presentation. “Now you think, ‘Oh, you can’t do that in a big city,’ but I’ll bet you you could do that in Seattle … and you’d say, ‘OK, let’s train and skill people right here to stay right here,’ and people would probably do it.”

NEW Health University has a 100% graduation rate so far, and other states have reached out to them. Over the past year, that has included Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota.

“You know, we’ve got great people that have worked at NEW Health. We have great people that work at NEW Health,” Sweeney said. “We have a can-do attitude, because our patients depend on us. Our kids depend on us. We’re passionate. These are our families.”

After Cantwell’s visit in Colville, she made her way to the Republic Library to discuss funding for a facility that would include a new library, community hall and childcare space.

The Republic Library currently serves 7,000 residents, 15% of whom live in poverty. Emily Burt, library building committee co-chair, said they hope this building will serve community members as a useful and safe place for children.

Republic residents Dave and Sue Betschart donated the land for the new facility.

“It being right across from the school, kids will be able to walk safely right to the library and be in a safe place. So yeah, that will address the child care needs, even if there isn’t a child care facility,” Burt said.

Rural Resources, one of their partners, also sent out a childcare survey two weeks ago, already receiving responses indicating 77 children would need full-time care, showing the growing need for this building.

“It just does so many things for a community. It gives people access to information, gives young people some of their first experiences in education – and the fact that this facility is just not up to par, really, for the standards we’d like to see is just something we have to fix, and it’s more challenging,” Cantwell said.

“But look at these guys. They got land donated. They got some other resources. So we’re going to do what we can to be helpful in brainstorming and getting some resources.”

After checking out the land with Republic community leaders, Cantwell made her final stop in Omak, where she visited Family Health Centers in light of the need for dental care in Okanogan County.

In a March news release , Cantwell announced she secured $2.9 million in federal funding to help Family Health Centers co-locate a new dental clinic with its largest medical clinic in Omak.

Through her visit, she was able to tour the facility before talking with community leaders, such as Family Health Centers CEO Jesus Hernandez, Director of Dental Operations Julie Downs and Omak Mayor Cindy Gagne.

The new clinic would allow FHC to add 20 new dental workstations and recruit four general dentists, doubling the number of dental patients the center is able to care for and bring annual patient visits to approximately 20,000.

”We’re growing everywhere, but communities may not have the resources to make sure that they have the health care, the health care workers and … day care,” Cantwell said. “And so when you can help them solve some of those problems, they, the community, solves the rest of the issues.”