NEWPORT — Nearly 100 Northeast Kingdom residents rallied in the rain Saturday to fight for the future of rural healthcare, with particular focus on preserving services at North Country Hospital.
The April 12 demonstration, organized by a coalition of local and statewide groups, brought community members together outside Newport Municipal Building to highlight concerns about diminishing healthcare access in Vermont’s rural communities.
“We had a rally here to keep North Country Hospital open,” said Kate Kanelstein of the Vermont Workers Center. “We heard from speakers, all kinds of speakers who were concerned, patients that are concerned about access to care, doctors who have worked here in the community for a long time.”
The event was co-organized by the Vermont Workers Center, Northeast Kingdom Organizing (NEKO), Newport Downtown Development, Northeast Kingdom Collaborative, and the Nonviolent Medicaid Army.
Paige Hartsell of NEKO explained that the rally emerged from discussions at the Northeast Kingdom Collaborative Conference last fall, where participants addressed the Green Mountain Care Board’s Wyman Report and its potential impact on rural hospitals.
“The threat to rural hospital closures has been a threat for decades and is happening all over the country, particularly in deindustrialized rural areas where the threat to health care is actually an existential crisis for rural communities,” Hartsell said.
Speakers included Dr. Andrea Dale from North Country Hospital, who addressed the unique healthcare challenges facing aging populations in rural areas.
“The aging process in general can be very difficult, but particularly in a rural area where there’s not a lot of resources, it can be particularly challenging,” Hartsell said, summarizing Dale’s remarks.
Newport Mayor Rick Ufford-Chase emphasized the hospital’s importance to the region’s vitality.
“All that we’re dreaming about for downtown Newport and Newport’s revitalization over the long haul is impossible if we lose this hospital,” Ufford-Chase said. “When you have to drive an hour and a half to two hours to find emergency care, it just makes it untenable.”
Audrey Grant, Operations Director for NEKO, highlighted broader concerns about healthcare access throughout the Northeast Kingdom.
“I’m also really thinking about the closure of the Planned Parenthood in St. Johnsbury, which was the only Planned Parenthood in the Northeast Kingdom,” Grant said. “You’re starting to see these little institutions being chipped away.”
Kanelstein noted that approximately 38,000 Vermonters recently lost Medicaid coverage when pandemic protections were rolled back.
“We’re organizing in communities that are at risk of losing their hospitals or have already lost healthcare facilities like Bellows Falls, and we’re bringing people together so that they can have a voice in these systems,” she said.
After speakers concluded, demonstrators marched through downtown Newport, receiving positive feedback from people passing by.
Organizers announced upcoming events including a “soup and stories” gathering on April 29 at St. Mark’s Church in Newport focused on rural healthcare issues, and a NEKO Member Monday event on May 5 in Derby.
“We need to reframe that conversation and actually see health care as a human right,” Hartsell said.
Following the march, participants gathered for a free community lunch inside the city’s public gym on the main floor of the Newport Municipal Building.
