FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The head of the National Medical Association passionately urged Black medical professionals to use the ballot box to reshape Florida healthcare policies that jeopardize communities.

“Your vote determines who expands or restricts Medicaid and Medicare, who invests in rural hospitals, and who protects clean water,” Dr. Roger Mitchell, president of the National Medical Association, said to about 500 people as he opened the Health Foundation of South Florida’s 2026 Black Health Summit in Pembroke Pines on Tuesday. “Your vote determines who writes laws, and laws determine lives.”

Mitchell repeatedly illustrated how health policy and funding decisions in Florida affect the Black community and the medical professionals who care for them.

“Good policy saves lives. Bad policy costs lives,” he said.

Florida’s healthcare policy landscape has undergone massive, sweeping changes over the last couple of legislative sessions. Those changes have negatively affected Medicaid eligibility, diversity initiatives in medical education, and access to reproductive care.

Addressing the medical professionals, Mitchell said: “What should concern a physician is whether communities that carry the greatest burden of disease, disability, poverty, and premature death have a meaningful voice in the decisions that are shaping their lives.”

He urged summit participants to vote and ensure that Florida’s policies and laws are good for Black health, not detrimental to it. He pointed out that federal policy changes should also trigger scrutiny — and advocacy.

“When Medicaid eligibility becomes more restrictive, we must ask how many patients may lose coverage. When work requirements are proposed, we must ask whether patients with chronic illness, disabilities, caregiving responsibilities, transportation barriers or unstable employment may face additional obstacles to accessing care,” Mitchell said. “When funding streams become uncertain, we must ask, what happens to rural hospitals that already operate on narrow margins? What happens to safety-net clinics and pregnant women? What happens to our children, our seniors and the working poor?”

Mitchell urged South Florida healthcare professionals to get off the sidelines.

“You need to register voters, educate communities, mentor students and support pathway programs. You need to advocate for patients, attend school board meetings, speak at city council meetings, engage legislators, write op-eds, testify before communities, serve on commissions, run for office,” he said. “You must lead because our community and our patients need more than prescriptions.”

His message hit home with the audience.

Longtime North Miami obstetrician Nelson Adams, a Health Foundation of South Florida board member, said he sees firsthand the negative effects of bad policies on his patients — maternal morbidity and mortality, pre-term births, and infant mortality. He believes policies on education, transportation, housing and the environment all contribute to a mother’s birth outcomes and can clearly make the connection to voting.

“We elect individuals who openly set policy, and those policies are what determine what happens in the lives of the people and their health outcomes,” he said.

Adams, who is also the chair of Sunshine Health, a state-sponsored healthcare plan for low-income children and families, called summit attendees influencers. “Their sphere of influence needs to be utilized in a way to encourage, inspire and enable others who are not in the room to vote,” he said.

Mitchell’s message, he said, is much needed:

“Black healthcare providers are in a survival mode,” Adams said. “They are really struggling just to keep their heads above water, so it’s difficult to advocate effectively. The sensitivity is there, the need is obvious, but what has to happen is messages like the one we got from Dr. Mitchell to say ‘now is the time.'”

Dr. O’Neil Pyke, chief medical officer of Jackson North, just authored a book aimed at doctors and patients, “Informed and Engaged.” After hearing Mitchell’s message, Pyke said about 20% of Floridians cannot access the preventive medical care they need. So he sees the importance of exercising the right to vote, “especially in selecting leaders who advocate for policies that give more people access to healthcare.”

Pyke said he reads the background and track record of every politician prior to voting.

“My vote is a purposeful vote,” he said. ” I think that what we want is a more educated electorate.”

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