Health is the foundational cornerstone of thriving societies and directly influences almost every major aspect of our lives, from financial security to collective well being and community safety. With over a decade and a half invested on the ground working shoulder to shoulder with the uninsured, patients on Medicaid, and neighbors from marginalized communities, Dr. Taneja has deep fluency in the complexities of health policy. Her expertise is not merely academic but informed and textured by the gravity of direct care to patients. From treating gunshot wounds in emergency rooms to holding the hands of queer and transgender New Mexicans who have traveled from the far corners of the state for gender-affirming care, Anjali brings with her a profound understanding of the repercussions of legislation upon our lives.  In the House, she will use her singular background to develop strategies for: 

• Shoring up addiction treatment and behavioral health access for all New Mexicans. 

• Stymying the accelerating shortage of care providers through recruitment and retention incentives such as free medical and nursing school programs.

• Growing apprenticeship programs within the medical field. 

• Providing independent practices with the tools and support necessary to flourish.

• Increasing funding for rural healthcare. 

• Guaranteeing that every New Mexican has access to high quality insurance.

Amid intensifying opioid and fentanyl epidemics, it is imperative that treatment is readily available for New Mexicans grappling with addiction. Dr. Taneja will prioritize navigability and accessibility of treatment for neighbors by:

• Approaching intersectional stressors for the unhoused from a housing first paradigm. 

• Expanding harm reduction and trauma-informed, evidence-based solutions. 

• Implementing MAT (medication for addictions treatment) options in all residential spaces that receive Medicaid funding. 

• Devising forward-thinking and high-yield applications of opioid settlement funds coming into the state.

Politics as usual won’t build a safer Albuquerque. As a physician, Dr. Taneja sees the impact of ineffective policy on the bodies of her patients every day. The status quo simply won’t cut it. That’s why Anjali will champion comprehensive, creative solutions that address the root causes of our enduring community safety crisis. In the legislature, she will work to advance authentic accountability and transformative justice by:

• Partnering with affected communities to develop infrastructure for stabilizing, healing, and supportive programs that can proactively preempt violence rather than merely react to it.

• Expanding mental and behavioral health access. 

• Investing in victim’s services, harm reduction, and non-coercive treatment options. 

• Enacting common-sense and data-driven gun safety reform. 

• Empowering grassroots strategies oriented around community self-determination. 

• Ending state reliance on for-profit prisons and jails. 

• Partnering with first responders like Albuquerque and Bernalillo County Fire Rescues to implement innovations that will bolster their life-saving work. 

Income inequality and disparities in wealth are starker now than ever before. As inflation soars, hundreds of thousands of families across the Land of Enchantment face daunting housing costs and our state continues to grapple with one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Working New Mexicans shouldn’t have to settle for a paradigm that puts profits over people. Dr. Taneja recognizes the imperative of creating a new economy that reflects a vision of a New Mexico that belongs to all of us. As your State Representative, Anjali will:

• Lead the fight for Universal Basic Income. 

• Scaling up progressive revenue models to ensure that big oil and gas companies pay their fair share. 

• Motivate strategies to mitigate student loan and medical debt. 

• Codify minimum wage indexing into statute. 

• Strengthen protections against predatory lenders and corporate landlords. 

• Build out apprenticeship programs and vocational training opportunities, especially for the 20% of youth who are neither working nor in school. 

• Increase funding to expand affordable housing. 

All New Mexicans have a right to clean air, potable water, fertile soil, and secure food. We must honor that right with bold, concrete plans, not wishful thinking. The health of our natural and lived environments are too important for incremental change. Healthier communities are safer communities but all too often, low-income communities and communities of color are hit hardest by the fallout from climate change and fossil fuel pollution.  In the New Mexico House, Dr. Taneja will fight to safeguard public and sacred lands as well as our abundant natural treasures by:

• Foregrounding passage of a Green Constitutional Amendment.

• Developing upstream and multidimensional responses to the escalating water crisis, including creation of a centralized state water authority as well as enactment of aquifer mapping and collaborations to increase localized water resilience planning. 

• Investing robustly in renewable energy technology and grid resilience. 

• Overhauling outdated oil and gas laws as well as eliminating caps for corporate polluters. 

• Embracing sustained, dynamic partnerships with tribal stakeholders and formalizing harm reduction efforts for frontline communities grappling with the ramifications of environmental racism. 

As the only candidate for the Legislature in memory who has provided abortion care, Dr. Taneja actualizes reproductive justice for New Mexicans every day. After efforts on the national stage in recent years to dismantle vital rights, we need expertise gleaned from providing direct care more than ever in the policymaking process. But electing pro-choice Democrats is merely a starting point, not a finish line. Following the 2021 repeal of the 1969 abortion ban by the New Mexico Legislature, legislators have a critical opportunity to affirmatively strengthen and expand reproductive justice. In the New Mexico House, Anjali will spearhead efforts to ensure that abortion, birth control, and pregnancy support are safe, affordable, and accessible to all by: 

• Advancing a state constitutional amendment to further codification of abortion and health equity. 

• Working to broaden availability of menstrual products in New Mexico prisons, jails, and detention centers. 

• Creating programmatic architecture to  help those seeking care access resources in order to guarantee that costs of services do not comprise a determinative barrier. 

• Develop funding frameworks to support travel, lodging, childcare, and other out-of-pocket costs that may coincide with the need for care.