I Found Hope at This Summit: Advocate Reflects on 2026 Florida Voices for Health Summit

For eleven years, I’ve stood at the intersection of crisis and advocacy, working alongside people experiencing homelessness. Most days, I navigate crisis, but I’m equally driven to push for systems-level change. My work spans food justice and food access, and I also lead community engagement at a free clinic for uninsured and underinsured

people. Having experienced barriers in healthcare access, poverty, and homelessness myself, I know firsthand the realities our communities face. These roles immerse me in constant motion, rarely allowing time to pause. Yet those pauses are essential for reevaluating and developing new strategies to address root problems. Attending the Florida Voices for Health Summit gave me that rare pause and a fresh perspective, helping me link daily challenges to broader solutions. But before I get there, I’d like to share some ground-up examples.

There have been so many times when I greeted a new guest at the local shelter who was now homeless after the death of a family member. The way this typically plays out is that they did not have health insurance or were underinsured, leaving them with thousands of dollars in medical debt. Their loved one, child, mother, or spouse got sick and had to be cared for. The caretaker was the only one able to work in the household but is now experiencing time poverty because they are also caretaking. The medical debt mounted, and they had to make impossible choices, working less or neglecting the loved one. Their car got repossessed, and they had to choose between feeding themselves and paying rent. Eventually, the dominoes fell, with the last domino being the death of that loved one, and no social support system, and no income. So now, while grieving, the person finds themselves without shelter, without safety, and without access to the care they need as well.

I cannot tell you how many people I’ve worked with who had severe disabilities and who did not qualify for social security disability or Medicare. While applying, they could not work, so they were stuck in this impossible situation where they were homeless and falling harder and harder into crisis. They could do everything asked of them, but once put on the “housing list,” it could take a year or longer to get their name called, and often longer to receive disability, creating a scenario where, once housed, they could easily relapse into homelessness with one small unexpected expense. I am not being hyperbolic here when I say I have watched these people die for years. Those who survive are now burdened with more layers of trauma, making it difficult to navigate a culture that is not designed for people who are sick, poor, or who experience disabilities.

At the same time, my other role requires building partnerships to bring services directly to people, minimizing the burdens of a fragmented safety net. High-burnout fields like social work, nonprofit service, and crisis support attract people who, like me, find these systems maddening. Even so, many don’t know where to start beyond just showing up and moving forward—often while watching conditions worsen. I am almost embarrassed to say that until the summit, I didn't realize the level of work people across the state and Florida Voices for Health were doing to expand Medicaid. I did not realize just how impactful that would be for the people with whom I work daily. 

Furthermore, I want to emphasize that it is a special kind of difficult to see the consequences daily, but to have also experienced them. It requires a hard-fought level of self-awareness. I know all the aphorisms about boundaries and self-care, but the truth is, you can do everything right, and it’s still difficult. Systems are still built to keep us not only downriver pulling the bodies out but also trying to find a life vest for ourselves at the same time, instead of running upriver and stopping the root causes. At the summit, I didn't just see solutions for other people's lives. I saw how those solutions would improve my life, too.

Despite my years of advocacy on a local level for improved systems that share power with people with lived experience and common-sense changes, I have never had the opportunity to pause and gain an in-depth, bird's-eye view at the level I did at the Florida Voices for Health Summit. I applied for a scholarship to attend in hopes of bringing back information to my community on how to advocate and understand things better. I, too, wanted to understand these things better. I am so grateful that they offered this. I am a part of numerous coalitions doing intersecting work, but we have struggled to sufficiently connect the issues to policy work as I did at the summit. In addition to gaining a better understanding and tools to address root issues, I heard powerful stories of advocacy and policy change that improved conditions for millions of people. In a state that ranks worst on so many health and economic justice outcomes, it is so encouraging to not just learn how it can be done, but to know that it can. I will bring this back to those in my community who didn’t have the opportunity to attend, and I am certain this will broaden the coalition of partners needed to accomplish these goals.

Times are hard right now, but many of us have long seen and experienced the consequences of what now has a broader impact. While it has often felt like shouting into the void, I found hope at this summit. I was happy to see its inclusivity and to meet people across the spectrum of advocacy. I connected with many: not only lobbyists and attorneys, but also the older Black woman who spent her life helping people apply for Medicaid, the mom with a medically fragile child who has experienced poverty, community leaders, coalition builders, nurses, and community health clinic operators. Together, these voices are powerful, and I am grateful to be one of them. Next year, I will bring my friends. Abigail Perret-Gentil

Founder & Executive Director of Grace Grows