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Helping Residents Afford Medicine

Legacy
Prescription Assistance
Organization: Town of Sharon
Grant: $12,000
Grant Year: 2024
County: Litchfield
State: CT

The Prescription Assistance Fund provides direct aid to individuals and families to help them cover prescription costs, premiums for prescription drug insurance, and/or prescription drug co-pays.

The Prescription Assistance Fund originated with the directives of several donor restricted funds and is supplemented by unrestricted FCH funds. The donor funds pooled for the Prescription Assistance Fund include the Bedelia Fall, Lois Allerton, Frank Northrup, and Margaret Williams Funds. Since 2004, thousands of individuals have been supported through the Prescription Assistance Fund, a fund that operates throughout FCH’s 17-town rural region. The program benefits people that are not eligible for Medicaid, but still have difficulty paying for prescription insurance premiums or have significant co-pays for medications they take regularly. This work is possible through the partnership of two long-standing grantee partners of FCH: Community Action Partnership of Dutchess County and The Healthcare Consortium, and through working with several Litchfield County towns’ selectmen and social workers.

Why We Funded This

In late 2023, the difficult decision was reached to sunset Prescription Assistance funding in Connecticut, following the acknowledgement that there is no longer a partner in northwest Connecticut to manage the program, strategic opportunity in limiting unrestricted funds allocated to this program, and with the frank reality that New York’s needs outpace Connecticut’s in this area. This funding was disbursed with the intent to partially cover indirect costs associated with program administration and the mutual understanding that participating towns would provide this security to their clients for a minimum of three-months.