WATSONVILLE >> The numbers don’t lie, but they also don’t tell the full story.

Nobody knows this better than Watsonville Community Hospital CEO Stephen Gray, hailed by his colleagues as a data whiz at a Wednesday event in Watsonville meant to shine a light on Santa Cruz County health outcomes and disparities.

To illustrate how political choices influence and equate to tangible data shifts impacting real people, Gray held up a graph of uninsured health care rates in the county, state and nation within the past almost 20 years. The chart brought into focus the impact of the Affordable Care Act, passed by Congress in 2010.“Since the (Affordable Care Act) was enacted, the uninsured rate in Santa Cruz County has been between 7% and 9% and in the 2022 data, it was down to 6%,” said Gray. “In a couple of years when the 2025 data shows up on this graph, you’re going to see this uninsured number start to climb back up. That is, if the current federal administration gets their way.”

Gray said the efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress to slash Medicaid, or Medi-Cal as it’s known in California, and tighten its eligibility requirements will cause harms at the local level that the data won’t immediately capture.

“Who’s that going to harm the most?” said Gray, referring to the proposed cuts. “Those who already struggle to get covered and to access preventative health care services.”

Gray’s comments were shared at a press conference that unpacked the recently-released 2025 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps report and was put on by Applied Survey Research, Pajaro Valley Unified School District and the Pajaro Valley Collaborative. The report, put together by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, gathers local data from recent years to create a detailed snapshot of health at the county level and compares it to state and national trends to reveal community strengths and barriers to well being.

In those respects, the county continues to have its fair share of both.

County Health Services Agency Assistant Director Jen Herrera said the county outperforms state and national averages in many areas including years of potential life lost, annual flu vaccinations and mammography screenings. It also has comparatively lower rates of sexually transmitted infections and high ratios of primary care and mental health providers.

But taking the years of potential life lost — a measurement of premature deaths — as an example, Herrera said disaggregating the data by race, or separating it into component parts, paints a different picture.

“We see that our Black, Hispanic and Latino community members face much higher rates of premature death than our white community members,” said Herrera. “These gaps reflect systemic inequities that still exist in health outcomes and life expectancy.”

Pajaro Valley Unified School District Superintendent Heather Contreras said child poverty remains a high concern within the South County school district where 86% of students are socioeconomically disadvantaged. According to the report, 14% of county children live in poverty, which is slightly lower than the state and national averages, but represents a 4% increase since 2019.

A key component of the response to these needs is collaboration, Contreras emphasized, as embodied by the Pajaro Valley Collaborative — an outgrowth of the South County Triage Group formed in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to streamline services. The group now includes 23 local agencies and nonprofits including the county, Second Harvest Food Bank Santa Cruz County, Encompass Community Services, Community Bridges and Housing Santa Cruz County. Its goal is to improve community health and wellness, economic mobility and civic engagement.

“There is a new need today. Not a COVID need anymore,” said Contreras, “but a need that is being unprecedentedly seen because of the national landscape.”

While the event was rooted in local statistics and experiences, much of the information shared was happening in the shadow of recent federal actions. Salud Para La Gente Chief Medical Officer Dr. Devon Francis said some patients that the nonprofit serves have stepped back from care opportunities out of overwhelming fear.

Francis told stories of patients that won’t go to a pharmacy to pick up prescriptions because they’re afraid they’ll have an interaction with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or I.C.E., on the way. Some that are eligible to apply for disability benefits have declined to do so because they don’t want to turn over any personal information to the government. One young patient was accepted to a four-year college this year, but turned down the offer because they don’t want to leave their family right now.

“These are just some of the real concerns we’re hearing about that are impacting the health of our community,” said Francis.

Francis added that 73% of the patients Salud Para La Gente serves are covered under Medi-Cal and another 5% use Medicare. The cuts that have been proposed in a recent bill from Congress would equate to more than 21,000 of Salud’s patients losing health care access, said Francis.

“We’re really all connected and it’s really only when everyone in the county is able to access high quality health care that we’re really going to have true health and wellness as a community,” Francis remarked.

Second Harvest CEO Erica Padilla-Chavez is no stranger to federal cuts. Last month, she reported that Second Harvest was abruptly denied 177,000 pounds of food provided through federal programs — the equivalent of 1 million meals. But after drawing a line from positive health outcomes to access to nourishing food, Padilla-Chavez also pointed out that there remain key local issues that contribute to food insecurity.

Second Harvest surveyed more than 350 residents that accessed food through the food bank and, according to Padilla-Chavez, 99% of respondents said housing costs are the primary driver of their need to rely on the food bank for groceries.

“There’s a reason why the food bank is a part of the Pajaro Valley Collaborative,” said Padilla-Chavez. “While I am busy making sure we have enough nourishment to ensure nobody in our community goes hungry, I’m not going to be able to solve this issue by myself. It’s a ‘we’ approach.”

The 2025 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps report is online at countyhealthrankings.org.