“What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual…In our oldest stories, we are reminded that…when we rely deeply on other lives, there is an urgency to protect them.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
When Federal Safety Nets Fail, Communities Step Up
Public health is in a moment of reckoning. Recent changes to social support systems, including cuts and more stringent administrative barriers to federal safety net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP), Medicare, and Medicaid have left millions of people struggling to make ends meet. And millions more are struggling to obtain health coverage and care and unable to pay skyrocketing premiums.
One bright spot in the darkness is that most public health is local. Cities, clinics, schools, and neighbors can create webs of care and systems of support, designed to ensure that everyone’s basic human needs are met. This practice of community care, often called mutual aid, can take on a variety of forms. Mutual aid is one of the most critical tools that communities can use to take care of each other. This practice of care supports people who cannot access traditional support systems and helps communities respond to natural disasters and other crises.
Lawyer and activist, Dean Spade, defines mutual aid as, “The radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.” Mutual aid refers to the practice of resource sharing and building communities of care. This practice of solidarity is intended to offer care, safety, and resources and fill the gaps that government and nonprofit programs fail to meet. Cornel West opined that, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Mutual aid is a prime example of love in public, and thus, a form of justice. Our liberation is interconnected and bound up with one another’s.
Mutual Aid Can Help Fill Gaps in Healthcare
Public health-related mutual aid activities are vast and varied. They may include the collecting and sharing of tangible public health goods like diapers, formula, food, hygiene products, or masks. Grassroots groups might also support access to health care by coordinating rides to appointments. Or, provide direct funding for health needs, stage public health clinics, and respond to requests for direct public health education.
Mutual aid is organized by voluntary, collaborative exchanges of goods, resources, services, and knowledge. These exchanges directly address social, political, and structural barriers to achieving health goods in the communities where we organize and live. Mutual aid can also look like responding to natural disasters and providing protection and support to immigrants and asylum seekers. Other forms of aid include organizing community medical clinics and distributing free, high quality masks, Covid testing kits, and education.
The History of Mutual Aid and Public Health
Mutual Aid is a term coined by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher, Peter Kropotkin in 1902. He touted the role of reciprocity and mutually beneficial cooperation necessary for the survival of both human and animal communities. The practice of collective care, however, is nothing new to Indigenous communities. Indigenous Peoples have long-established practices of caring for each other for survival, particularly in times of crisis.
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief began with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. While the government largely ignored and downplayed the post disaster crisis, grassroots organizers formed myriad mutual aid networks. Medical solitary teams and street medics came to the aid of people in need of medical care. These teams started with providing care at protests and then created the Common Ground Clinic. This clinic was founded and run by volunteers and provided free, holistic, and effective treatment to those who needed it.
The Black Panther Party’s Health Activism
Another prominent example of sustainable mutual aid was organized by the Black Panther Party (BPP). Beginning in 1966, city, state, and federal bureaucrats failed to address the basic needs of low-income Black communities, among others. In response, members coordinated their own community medical care and other basic needs, a radical act at the time. The Panthers were champions for health as a human right for all, not a privilege for some. This is a message that we’re still fighting for today.
The BPP pioneered free social service programs and networks of free health clinics. These models of care are now embedded in the U.S. today. People’s Free Medical Clinics administered basic preventive care. They also tested for lead poisoning and hypertension and helped with housing, employment, and social services. In 1971, the Panthers launched a campaign to address Sickle cell. This disease predominantly affected people of African descent and the medical establishment largely ignored the condition. To counter this systemic racism and inequity, the Panthers created a national program to screen for, educate, and provide care for Sickle cell.
Other Examples of Mutual Aid
Food Not Bombs (FNB) was founded in Cambridge, MA in 1980 in conjunction with the continuing anti-nuclear movement. Now a network of independent collectives that stretch around the globe, FNB continues to provide free, vegan and vegetarian food to all who come to their distributions. Similarly, during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the U.S. in the 80s, many LGBTQ groups started mutual aid networks to provide medical care, support groups, and political activism when the government chose to ignore the community. Founded in 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement organized bail funds for people arrested by police for protesting police brutality and racially motivated violence.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people stepped up to make sure that their friends, families, and neighbors had what they needed to survive. Many people mobilized to deliver groceries, sew masks, raise money for the newly unemployed to stay housed, and provide free child care for essential workers. Groups like Mask Blocs still distribute respirator masks for free, along with other pandemic-related supplies such as air purifiers and rapid tests.
In late 2025, Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and many other communities around the country, community members created block-by-block rapid response networks to alert neighbors when ICE is present and to directly support one another. Communities built mutual aid efforts locally and statewide to provide rent relief, bail funds, food distribution, child care, transportation, towing services, laundry services, and medical care. Theses efforts were, and continue to be, led by grassroots organizers, local business owners, and faith leaders, many of whom are BIPOC, immigrants, and women.
Disabled Mutual Aid and Community Care
The disability community has also long been practicing mutual aid. The way that collective care is often practiced in the disability community, called disabled mutual aid, is intentionally inclusive. Disability Justice, a term coined by Patty Berne, is a movement that shows how disabled mutual aid is different from abled mutual aid. Disabled mutual aid is inherently adaptable, prioritizes true flexibility and sustainable, long-term care. There are multiple ways of accounting for, and finding creative solutions to meet, everyone’s individual unique and diverse needs. The disabled mutual aid framework centers true accessibility and addresses power dynamics. Centering the needs of the disability community benefits everyone, and is simply good public health practice.
How to Connect with Local Mutual Aid Groups
- Find a mutual aid network near you: Mutual Aid Hub
- Find your local Mask Bloc here. Grassroots mutual aid groups that distribute respirator masks, and sometimes air purifiers and rapid tests, for free.
- Volunteer with Food Not Bombs.
- Contact your local food pantry or pet shelter.
- Contact your local immigrant advocacy/rights group, disability support networks, or financial solidarity projects. Or, unhoused support groups, neighborhood pods, bail or bond fund support for incarcerated/detained people.
- Ask your local librarian, congregation/faith community, or other community leaders for mutual aid contacts.
- Attend events focused on immigrant rights and talk with the organizers.
- Contact mobile vaccination clinics or free medical clinics.
Collective Care is Public Health
Collective care is public health. Mutual aid is love in action. Mutual Aid creates healthier, more resilient communities. Everyone has a role to play in caring for the health, safety, and well-being of the community.
Alison T. Brill