06.25.2020 / Press Release

Visionary Health Care Equity Expert Maria Lemus Joins the Board of Directors at Families USA

Washington, D.C., June 25, 2020 – Maria Lemus has been appointed to the Board of Directors at Families USA.

Lemus is the founding Executive Director of Visión y Compromiso, an organization dedicated to a healthy and dignified life for all by supporting the transformational work of promotoras, community health workers and other grassroots community leaders in immigrant communities, low-income communities, and communities of color. These leaders are local community experts and trusted relationship builders who have an innate ability to listen to and engage with residents, their families, and their neighbors. Since 2000, Visión y Compromiso has provided the promotor and community health worker workforce with leadership, capacity building and advocacy through its Network of Promotoras and Community Health Workers—which now represents over 5,000 promotoras and community health workers associated with clinics, hospitals and diverse community-based organizations in rural and urban communities across California and Nevada and throughout the U.S., Mexico, and Guatemala.

Representing Vision y Compromiso, Lemus is a member of numerous local, state, and national steering committees, workgroups and coalitions including the National Association of Community Health Workers (NACHW) and California Coverage and Health Initiatives (CCHI). She is the recipient of numerous awards and recognition including a California State Assembly Recognition Resolution. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“With critical experience in community health and health equity issues and longtime dedication to reducing the barriers to health education and services in native-born and immigrant communities, Maria brings experience that is vital to our mission of achieving better health and health care for all,” said Frederick Isasi, Executive Director of Families USA. “We are honored that she will lend her expertise to our work as we create a more equitable, accessible and affordable health care system and respond to a pandemic that has had especially harsh consequences for communities of color exposing sharp disparities in our health care system.”

“Twenty years ago, Visión y Compromiso was founded on the belief that everyone deserves to live a healthy and dignified life. It is my pleasure to join Families USA, a highly respected organization at the vanguard of health and social justice equity,” said Lemus. “This is an important time for our nation and leading organizations such as Families USA have an important role to play in advancing justice and responding to community health needs, particularly in communities of color and among those who have been disproportionately impacted by health inequities. I look forward to continuing the good work of the Board, supporting our allies, and lifting up the voice of promotoras, community health workers, CHR’s and other grassroots community leaders who, each day, are engaged in building trusting relationships with people and their families in communities across our nation. Adelante!”