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The KUNM news team's coverage of the 2020 legislative session and its impacts

State Budget Boosts Public Health

Tug of war statue at Roundhouse
New Mexico In Depth
Tug of war statue at Roundhouse

 

Lawmakers passed a $6.3 billion budget Wednesday night. One billion of that will go to behavioral health care and the Department of Health.

 

Health workers would get a raise, and anti-smoking programs would see a multimillion-dollar boost.

Five-hundred thousand dollars was set aside specifically to make behavioral health treatment more widely available. Democratic Representative Debbie Armstrong voted in favor of the bipartisan budget.

 

"Some of the things we’ve had to cut over the years, I think we were able to restore," she said. "So I hope that will at least move us back in the right direction."

 

Armstrong sponsored some memorials to try and expand treatment options for opioid addiction. The Secretary of Health would have to approve them.

 

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KUNM’s Public Health New Mexico project is funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the McCune Charitable Foundation, and the Con Alma Health Foundation.

May joined KUNM's Public Health New Mexico team in early 2018. That same year, she established the New Mexico chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and received a fellowship from the Association of Health Care Journalists. She join Colorado Public Radio in late 2019.