Agencia Alpha comes to the library to answer community’s MassHealth questions

Immigrant rights group Agencia Alpha is working with the Waltham Public Library to make health coverage more accessible for Waltham’s Spanish-speaking community.

The library is hosting Agencia Alpha’s drop-in health care registration assistance program between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays every week until September. These drop-in hours are held in the microfilm room.

Waltham residents can meet with Agencia Alpha’s MassHealth certified application counselors, who can help them apply for insurance through MassHealth, renew their existing insurance or understand changes to their application. 

Although anyone is welcome to drop in, counselors from Agencia Alpha speak Spanish and aim to assist Waltham’s Latino community. Haybi Garcia, a Waltham resident and one of Agencia Alpha’s certified advisors, said that the community is often underserved in health care. 

“Unfortunately [when people] call the MassHealth line, the understanding in Spanish is not the same [as in English],” she said. 

She added that it’s important for community members who need assistance navigating the health care system to be able to access empathetic help in their own language.

Agencia Alpha’s drop-in program with the WPL is focused on health care assistance in light of changes to MassHealth by the federal “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Garcia says the new law requires MassHealth applicants to provide even more documentation, tightens deadlines for applications and makes renewals more difficult.

Through an interpreter, Garcia emphasized that community members should check on any changes to their own MassHealth plans to make sure they have the documentation they need to maintain their coverage. “Now more than ever people need to pay attention to their health care coverage,” she said.

Damaris Velasquez, Agencia Alpha’s co-founder and director of programs, emphasized that the agency collaborates with other health care access programs. For example, Agencia Alpha has partnerships with multiple agencies through the Equity Now & Beyond health equity group, to which it can refer clients for assistance if they need help in Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Somali or other languages.

Beyond health care 

Waltham residents can stop by Agencia Alpha’s drop-in program at the library for assistance in matters beyond health care as well. The agency’s counselors are able to refer them to other programs within Agencia Alpha or to one of their partners.

Agencia Alpha offers Spanish-language legal assistance with a variety of issues, including immigration, translation, citizenship, notary work and registration for government programs.

Velasquez said she hopes to expand the program to cover assistance with a broader range of legal issues. “This is just a pilot program. We’re excited to see if it will develop into something else,” she said.

Agencia Alpha has connections to other Waltham organizations such as the Boys & Girls Club of Waltham, the Waltham Families School and Waltham Public Schools’ Bilingual Parent Advisory Council. 

Catherine Schopp, the library’s literacy coordinator, said the WPL previously worked with Agencia Alpha on a program to assist Waltham residents with applying for driver’s licenses after the implementation of the Work and Family Mobility Act in 2023. 

Since then, Schopp said, the library has coordinated one-off events with Agencia Alpha, but this ongoing program is new. The agency’s drop-in hours will operate off of a similar model to the library’s existing MassHiring drop-in hours, held every Monday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

“The library has been looking for ways to support our community more, and especially our immigrant community right now,” Schopp said. “We’re really excited to have [Agencia Alpha] here on a consistent basis.”