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Category: Featured – News & Insights

Leveraging the Rural Health Transformation Fund to Improve Access to Care

May 14, 2026

BY: Shao-Chee Sim and Sue Polis

Rural communities have been navigating serious health challenges for a long time—hospital closures, workforce shortages, long drives to see a specialist, and higher rates of chronic disease, to name just a few. These issues are deeply connected, and for many communities, they’ve reached a breaking point.

Congress aimed to address these challenges by creating the Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Fund, part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR1) passed last July. The RHT Fund represents an important federal investment—designed not just to keep rural health systems afloat, but to help them evolve into models that are more stable, preventive, and community‑centered over the long term.  And at the same time, while the RHT Fund is key in strengthening rural health access, with the level of Medicaid funding cuts overall including in HR1, resources will continue to be a challenge more broadly. And because the funding for the RHT Fund is for five years, sustainability also needs to be further considered as this work moves forward.

Now that states are moving from planning into implementation, the RHT Fund is starting to shape how rural health care is financed, organized, and delivered. While states receive the funding directly, nonprofits and community‑based organizations are essential partners in turning system‑level investments into real improvements in people’s lives.

If your organization works in or alongside rural communities, understanding how the RHT Fund works—and how your state is approaching it—is becoming increasingly important. To further inform how the Lutheran Services in America network can leverage the RHT Fund, read: The Rural Health Transformation Fund: What It Is, How States are Using It, and Where Nonprofits Fit In.

Shao-Chee Sim is Executive Vice President for Health Policy, Research, and Strategic Partnerships at Episcopal Health Foundation and Sue Polis is Vice President of Public Relations and Government Affairs at Lutheran Services in America.

Here We Stand: Coming Together with New Resources

May 14, 2026

BY: Sarah Dobson

On April 23, Lutheran Services in America network members from our Policy and Advocacy Committee, the Disability Network, and the board of directors convened in Washington, D.C., for a day of meetings with Congressional offices. Nineteen member organizations were represented, and over 40 meetings were conducted in total.

Our Asks? No more cuts to Medicaid. Support for Workforce and Housing.

As part of our recent re-launch of our Here We Stand campaign to protect Medicaid, network members went to the Hill with three primary asks:

What can you do?

This is a pivotal moment as we work on two fronts:

  • Federal: Congress is considering a third budget reconciliation bill that may mean even deeper cuts to Medicaid. Learn more and take action.
  • State-level efforts: Whether your state is already working on implementation of H.R. 1 provisions including work reporting requirements and limitations from provider tax constraints, state budgets are tightening and most will be trying to do more with less.

Also consider the following:

  • 5/21: Join our May Capitol Conversations webinar to learn more about future budget reconciliation efforts.
  • Sign-up for one-on-one consultation to review updated Here We Stand. Resources and options for action. to review updated Here We Stand. Resources and options for action.
  • Use our new Here We Stand resources to engage with lawmakers and the media. Materials include:
    • Medicaid Brief: Backgrounder on state fiscal challenges, Medicaid program integrity and waste, fraud and abuse.
    • Action Guide: Suggested ways you can engage policymakers at the state or federal levels.
    • Medicaid FAQs: Frequently asked questions and answers about the importance of Medicaid, policy impacts, and the Here We Stand campaign.
    • Messaging for Federal Lawmakers: Suggested messaging for meetings with members of Congress (House and Senate).
    • Messaging for State Lawmakers: Suggested talking points for your meetings/engagements with state lawmakers and officials.

Please contact the Lutheran Services in America government relations and public policy team:

Sue Polis
Sarah Dobson
Bill Kallestad
Kylie Bowlds

Support with communications efforts:

Christopher Findlay

 

Sarah Dobson is Senior Director of Advocacy and Public Policy at Lutheran Services in America.

Transforming Together Cohort Starts with Lived Experience

May 13, 2026

BY: LSA Staff

The people most affected by a system usually know the most about how to fix it. At Lutheran Services in America, we are building the capacity to act on that. 

We work with more than 300 organizations serving 1 in 50 people. And one of the most consistent things we hear from leaders across that network is this: we need to listen better to the families we serve and to the communities we’re part of.

Knowing it and building the capacity to actually do it are two different things. And that is what Transforming Together is about.

This week, 14 organizations from across the Lutheran Services in America network launched a nine-month action cohort — one of the first initiatives of its kind in our network — designed to embed lived experience at the center of how organizations work and how they influence the systems around them. Not as a checkbox or consultation, but as a genuine driver of strategy, evaluation, and practice.

With expert facilitation from Greater Good Studio, these 14 organizations are building real skills: 

  • how to gather and use community feedback in ways that actually change decisions 
  • how to tell stories rooted in lived experience 
  • how to design evaluation that captures what matters to the people served  

We have long recognized that the people closest to the problem are closest to the solution. Transforming Together puts capacity behind that belief with a cohort of leaders focused on building the infrastructure to truly listen and make change.

We’re excited to share what this cohort discovers and the changes we make alongside people and families.

Participating organizations include: 

This work is made possible, in part, through the generous support of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and other national partners. We are deeply grateful for their partnership and commitment to strengthening communities and advancing opportunities for those we serve. 

Lutheran Services in America Adds Four Members to its Board of Directors

May 4, 2026

Rural Voices Shaping Transformation (and Better Policy) for Older Adults

April 16, 2026

BY: Regan McManus

Rural older adults navigating both Medicare and Medicaid face some of the most complex challenges in our healthcare system, and Lutheran Services in America went directly to the source to understand why.

In July 2025, Lutheran Services in America launched Rural Voices 2025: Elevating the Resilience of Rural Older Adults Navigating Medicare-Medicaid, in partnership with The SCAN Foundation. This human-centered initiative reflects Lutheran Services in America’s longstanding leadership in rural aging, and its belief that the people closest to a problem hold the most important insights for solving it. Drawing on our network’s Rural Aging Action Network and in partnership with Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota and Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota, Lutheran Services in America engaged dual-eligible older adults across rural Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota — communities that are too often invisible in national policy conversations yet disproportionately burdened by access barriers and system complexity.

Working with Public Policy Lab and The People Say, Lutheran Services in America conducted in-depth, human-centered interviews with 16 rural older adults whose stories now contribute to a growing national archive of firsthand insights. These are not data points. They are detailed, lived accounts of what it actually takes to age in place in rural America: navigating fragmented care, confusing benefits, workforce shortages, and policies that weren’t designed with them in mind.

The findings are now available, and urgently relevant. Lutheran Services in America’s newly released e-report, “Rural Voices Shaping Transformation,” translates these experiences into a clear roadmap for change: simplifying eligibility and enrollment, reducing administrative burden, improving benefit communication, and modernizing policies that inadvertently penalize rural older adults with farm-based assets. At a moment when federal policy affecting older adults is shifting rapidly, this report offers policymakers, providers, and advocates concrete, community-grounded direction.

To extend the reach of these findings, Lutheran Services in America hosted the webinar “From the Ground Up: Using Rural Voices to Build Better Policy for Aging Americans,” the recording of which is available. Together, the report and webinar equip anyone working in aging, rural health, or policy with the evidence and tools to act.

Lutheran Services in America is actively sharing these findings with policymakers, faith and aging partners, and advocates nationwide. The goal is clear: systems that honor the dignity and complexity of aging in place, wherever someone calls home.

Read the report. Watch the webinar. Join the effort. To learn more or explore partnership opportunities, contact Regan McManus.

Regan McManus, Director of Aging Initiatives at Lutheran Services in America.

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