The Indian Health Service oversees a dozen area offices nationwide, including three locations in Arizona: Phoenix, Tucson and Navajo. Now, the federal agency is preparing to shut one of them down, citing a proposed realignment plan to modernize operations and improve health outcomes.
But state Democrats are sounding alarm.
More than 28,000 patients depend on the Tucson Area Office, especially members from the Tohono O’odham Nation and Pascua Yaqui Tribe. Urban Indians living in the metro also rely on this institution, as does the Tucson Indian Center.
The facility in southern Arizona mostly handles administrative and technical work, but is expected to merge with the Phoenix Area Office. That location is already responsible for 180,000 patients across Arizona, Nevada and Utah.
According to IHS, no staff would be cut.
“Consolidating one area to another, you’re going to have a disruption of service,” said Arizona Democratic state Rep. Brian Garcia, who is Pascua Yaqui. “Any cut is going to cause a delay.”
He’s concerned — so too is fellow tribal member Sally Ann Gonzales, a Democratic state senator who also chairs the Indigenous Peoples Caucus and once sat on the Pascua Yaqui Tribal Council.
“I’ve never been to that clinic, but I know that some of our members do,” added Gonzales. “And I used to represent Tohono O’odham and it’s in their San Xavier District, so it’s disheartening to learn of its closure.”
More than 30 Arizona state Democrats sent a bicameral letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this month, urging him to halt the looming closure.
They’re also asking Kennedy to “engage in meaningful government-to-government consultation” with leadership from the affected tribes and “publicly demonstrate how healthcare access and service quality will be maintained or improved before any final decision is made.”
When asked by KJZZ, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not answer multiple requests for comment in response to the lawmakers' letter.
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