Addressing the Health Care Gap: Why Hemet/San Jacinto Needs Equitable Policy Action

     

The health of our community is the foundation of our collective future. As we analyze current data from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), a critical reality for our region has been brought into sharp focus: the Hemet/San Jacinto Service Area is officially designated as a Medically Underserved Area (MUA) cite. 

What does this mean for us? With an Index of Medical Underservice (IMU) score of 53.8, our district is demonstrating a clear, documented shortage of primary health services. This isn't just a number—it represents real barriers to preventative care, chronic disease management, and overall community well-being for our neighbors.

Moving from Analysis to Advocacy: It is time to move beyond identifying these gaps and start closing them. My focus, both in my academic research and my commitment to this community, is centered on developing equitable and sustainable policies that bridge these disparities.

Actionable steps include: 

1. Targeted Resource Allocation: Directing federal and state grants toward local health infrastructure. 
2. Community-First Strategies: Expanding primary care access points that reflect the unique needs of our residents. 
3. Sustained Advocacy: Engaging stakeholders, from local leadership to regional health officials, to prioritize equitable health funding for Hemet/San Jacinto. 

We have the data; now we must build the capacity to ensure that the benefits of social justice and public health reach every member of our community.

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Season's Greetings & Gratitude - Here's to a Brighter 2026!

 

As 2025 draws to a close, I express my deepest gratitude for your partnership and trust. You are an invaluable part of this community, and your support is the engine that drives our work to protect, educate, and advocate for California’s most underserved populations—including older adults, diverse communities, and those navigating economic challenges or limited English proficiency.

While 2025 brought its share of uncertainty, it also proved the power of collective resilience. As we look toward 2026, we know significant challenges remain in the fight for equity. I invite you to stay engaged in the coming year as we work to turn policy into progress. Together, we can meet these challenges with expertise, compassion, and unwavering dedication. Thank you for believing in this mission.

With gratitude and appreciation, 

Eric

Why Are We Waiting? My New DPA Research on "Administrative Chrononormativity"

As many of you know, alongside my community advocacy work, I am currently a Doctor of Public Administration (DPA) student at the University of La Verne. My goal in this program is to research how our institutions actually work—and often, how they don't work for the communities facing the most significant hurdles.

Here is a sneak peek into my latest research focus. It centers on a concept that sounds complicated but is something many of us have experienced: Administrative Chrononormativity.

In simple terms, this is the idea that our institutions set rigid timelines (like the "9-to-5" standard) that prioritize their own convenience over the reality of people's lives.

When a clinic has limited hours, forms take weeks to process, or appointments have indefinite waiting periods, "time" becomes an invisible barrier to healthcare access—especially for marginalized groups like the Queer community, gig workers, or parents with rigid schedules.

Below is the abstract of the research paper I am developing on this topic, which examines these barriers and highlights organizations such as the Black Researchers Collective that are challenging these delays.

Research Abstract:

Public administration and health policy traditionally operate on straight time—a linear, standardized temporal logic that prioritizes institutional efficiency over community responsiveness. This review argues that this "administrative chrononormativity" creates systematic barriers for populations with non-normative life cycles, effectively trapping marginalized communities in a perpetual "waiting room" while health crises escalate.

To illustrate this temporal conflict, this analysis contrasts the administrative gatekeeping of gender-affirming care against the "informed consent" model. Where traditional policies impose linear waiting periods—forcing patients to prove their identity over time—informed consent models operate on queer time, synchronizing medical access with the patient’s immediate urgency. The former prioritizes risk management; the latter prioritizes survival.

Furthermore, this review presents the Black Researchers Collective (BRC) as a critical case study in resisting administrative delay. Through their methodological pillar, the "Power of Story," the BRC challenges the "ivory tower" timeline of data extraction and delayed analysis. By validating lived experience and narrative ownership as immediate, actionable policy data, the BRC demonstrates how communities can refuse the administrative imperative to wait for external quantitative validation.

The review concludes that achieving health equity requires a fundamental shift in the public administrator's role: from a temporal gatekeeper to a community synchronizer. Policy timelines must be restructured to value qualitative, nonlinear realities. If administrative processes are legally "on time" but communities remain in crisis, the timeline itself is a policy failure. Administrators must learn to set their watches to the community's time, ensuring that support keeps pace with the need.

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Closing Thoughts

I believe that to achieve accurate health equity, we need policies that are "chronologically inclusive"—systems designed for real lives, not just standard business hours.

I would love to hear your thoughts. Have you experienced "time" as a barrier to accessing care or services in our community?

Beyond Buzzwords: Operationalizing Equity in Riverside County Policy

In public service today, "equity" is a word we hear constantly. It finds its way into mission statements, strategic plans, and political speeches. But for a resident struggling to make ends meet in Riverside County, a word on a page does not pay the rent or keep the lights on.

As a Community Action Partnership (CAP) Commissioner and, currently, a doctoral student in public administration, my focus isn't just on saying the word—it's on operationalizing it. We need to move beyond equity as a buzzword and toward equity as a measurable outcome.

To do that, we must understand the crucial difference between equality and equity.

The View Over the Fence

The simplest way to understand this difference is the classic illustration of three people of different heights trying to watch a game over a fence.

• Equality is giving everyone the exact same size box to stand on. It sounds fair on the surface. But the tallest person didn't need the box, and the shortest person still can't see over the fence.

• Equity is recognizing those differences. It means giving the shortest person two boxes, the middle person one, and the tallest person none, so they all share the same view.

Why This Matters in County Policy

In the context of local government, "equality" often looks like a standardized, one-size-fits-all program. It is efficient to administer, but it ignores the reality that our residents start from vastly different places due to systemic barriers, generational poverty, or geographic isolation.

If we treat unequal situations equally, we simply perpetuate the status quo.

At the Community Action Partnership, our mandate is to fight the causes and effects of poverty. This requires an equity lens. It means asking tough questions: Are our application processes accessible to a single parent working two jobs without a reliable car? Are we targeting resources to the neighborhoods with the highest historic underinvestment?

Advancing equity is complicated, demanding work. It requires moving beyond good intentions and looking at hard data on outcomes. As your Commissioner, I am committed to ensuring that Riverside County’s resources are used not just efficiently, but justly, to build real ladders of opportunity for our low-income residents. We aren't just trying to hand out boxes; we are working to lower the fence.