G-2301-17705

Maine Equal Justice (MEJ) is a legal aid organization that performs impact litigation and advocacy on systemic issues impacting people in Maine within three issue areas: access to adequate healthcare, housing, transportation and childcare; food and income security; higher education and training.

Maine Equal Justice has been a funded partner of CareQuest Institute since 2019 for work to expand dental benefits in MaineCare, the state's Medicaid program, with a community-driven advocacy approach. After years of advocacy work, Maine Equal Justice and its partners celebrated the passage of extensive dental benefits for Medicaid beneficiaries in 2021, with benefits beginning in July 2022. MEJ’s grant in 2022 brought consumer input from their direct legal services area of work into Maine’s benefit implementation through the facilitation of the MaineCare Advisory Committee and Dental Subcommittee. Additionally, MEJ advocated for further policymaker support for the “All Means All” campaign, which aims to expand MaineCare, including oral health benefits, to all Mainers regardless of immigration status.

This year’s proposal from MEJ logically builds on the work accomplished in 2022. Through their leadership in implementing the Medicaid Adult Dental Benefit, MEJ will address several barriers to the equitable and accessible implementation of the benefit:

MEJ will collaborate with Medicaid to reduce process barriers and “red tape” associated with provider participation in Medicaid.

With its partners, MEJ will put forth relevant legislation that addresses barriers to participation in the oral health workforce and increase access to alternative health models, like school-based care.

MEJ will assess educational resources and opportunities around reducing stigma for Medicaid participants and decreasing fear among participants around seeking dental care.

MEJ will also continue communication and outreach about the new benefit to low-income communities.

As part of the “All Means All” campaign, MEJ will partner with a steering committee of immigrant-led organizations to introduce legislation, get legislative buy-in, provide policy-related technical assistance to legislators, and then perform story collection and targeted communications to support the broad base of advocates for this bill. The All Means All coalition includes the recently approved Oral Health Fund grantee, New Mainers Public Health Initiative.

The budget of $105,358 represents 3% of the organization’s overall budget. Approximately $70,000 of the budget is allocated toward staff time. The remaining line items are allocated for communications expenses, meeting expenses and translation services for advocacy materials.