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Even within one of the wealthier municipalities in Georgia, Cobb County has pockets where the lack of health services concerns Lisa Crossman. Lately, the Cobb and Douglas Public Health deputy director has been particularly focused on the southern part of the county — an area sandwiched between Marietta and the Six Flags Over Georgia amusement park.
Within this region, as many as 40% of residents in certain census tracts lack health insurance. Crossman has found that many neighborhoods have few healthy food options, resources for expecting parents, or mental health providers.
All these factors, she believes, impact the ways South Cobb residents experience health. They report their health is fair or poor more frequently than people in other parts of the county, and the average life expectancy in many neighborhoods is lower than people in surrounding ZIP codes.
“We would want to impact those,” she said.
Crossman has a plan to do that: Partner with local organizations, public and private, to expand health services in the area.
Cobb and Douglas Public Health runs a small clinic in Austell that offers a few programs, like federal nutritional help for new parents and babies. The health department hopes to replace that with a building over seven times the size, one that would offer a wider array of affordable programs for low-income residents.
The new programs that would accompany the structure — services like cancer screenings, mental and physical health care, and a new food pantry — aim to make it easier for South Cobb neighborhoods to be healthy.
“Being able to provide needed health services in the South Cobb area, I think, is going to have a tremendous impact on Cobb County,” Crossman said. “By having people in our community who are healthier and able to work, able to go to school, able to contribute to the well-being of a community.”
To build this project, one that Cobb and Douglas expects to cost about $17.5 million, Crossman has found support from local and state government, private nonprofits, and her own health agency. But she’s still a few million short of covering construction costs, and the source she had hoped to fill that gap is less predictable than it was a few months ago.
Throughout 2024, Crossman was in contact with Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, about providing $3 million in U.S. Senate appropriations to help complete the project. The senator accepted the request, and it was set to be approved by Congress last December.
“This funding from Sen. Ossoff, it would really get us across the finish line,” Crossman said.
But instead of passing a fiscal year 2025 budget that month, Congress delayed that decision, meaning Cobb and Douglas Public Health still doesn’t know whether its funding will be included in this year’s budget bill. And this week, congressional Republicans, who now have majorities in the Senate and the House, have proposed cutting hundreds of billions of dollars to make room for federal tax cuts — funding reductions which are likely to target federal health initiatives. Republican leaders say the tax cuts are important for decreasing Americans’ cost of living.
Even a successful passage of Cobb and Douglas Public Health’s request may be less reliable than it once was. Last month, the Trump administration sought to stop distributing funds across the government, including billions of dollars of allocated congressional appropriations. A federal district judge has blocked that from being implemented, but she recently wrote the risk of a future funding freeze remains.
Daniela Campos, a spokesperson for Ossoff, said the senator continues to support the project and hopes it will be included when the Congress passes a 2025 fiscal year spending bill.
“Sen. Ossoff will continue advocating for this important project as the Republican majority in Congress sets the legislative calendar,” she said in an email. She did not respond to a question about whether the senator thought it was still likely the South Cobb Public Health Center would receive federal funding for its construction.
Back in Cobb County, Melanie Kagan leads the Center for Family Resources, a 65-year-old Marietta social service nonprofit that aims to aid residents at risk of or experiencing homelessness. The center plans to be one of the private partners for the proposed health center, offering referral services for unhoused residents and running a food pantry on site.
Kagan knows there are large swaths of the South Cobb community who struggle to access housing and healthy food options, a reason why she’s excited to be a part of the project. If the project was set back because of federal funding issues, she thinks it could jeopardize the well-being of residents who have lacked critical resources for years.
“The delay could be detrimental to some of those folks that are already kind of balancing on that edge,” she said.
Mental health services out of reach for many
At Sweetwater Mission in Austell, Pastor Tracy Carter also works to aid South Cobb residents at risk of health challenges. He’s the outreach minister for the nonprofit, a collaboration of local churches that seeks to address community needs. That includes providing life skills training classes, back-to-school supply drives, and weekly flu shot clinics.
While Sweetwater has plenty to offer, Carter said key resources are out of reach for many of its clients. Specifically, he sees people with trauma, often exacerbated by economic hardships including rising housing costs, who can’t find affordable mental health treatment options.
“Especially with young people, it’s a domino effect on the whole community,” he said.
Carter said there are some reliable mental health resources in the area, but the demand for these services around Austell is outpacing the availability. If the proposed South Cobb Health Center is successful in building out more affordable counseling options and referral programs, as is outlined in Cobb and Douglas’ plan, he said that could really improve a lot of his neighbors' well-being.
If these types of health services continue to be difficult to access in South Cobb, he thinks the effects could negatively ripple through community members’ lives.
“If your health is bad, and you don’t have nowhere to help you in the area, then you’re going to be out of a job for a long time,” Carter said.
Limited public transportation options make the lack of local health programs even more pronounced, Kagan said. For residents without cars, getting to a grocery store can be difficult, let alone a health provider a dozen miles away from home.
Because South Cobb has neighborhoods in which hundreds of households don’t have vehicles, Kagan said the importance of local services like the ones South Cobb Health Center aims to provide becomes even more pronounced.
“You get locked into this space where you don’t have a lot of things at your fingertips,” she said.
Cobb and Douglas prepared to look for other funding sources
While Crossman, the Cobb and Douglas Public Health deputy director, hopes the federal funds to complete this project come through soon, she said she’s preparing for a variety of scenarios.
She’s applying for grants from groups like private foundations and other groups invested in the flourishing of Cobb County. In her role with the local health department, even beyond this project, Crossman said she’s constantly thinking about how to make sure the agency is able to meet its residents’ needs.
“I look for money in a lot of different places, all over the place, to help us meet our mission,” she said.
If the federal funding doesn’t come through soon, Crossman said she would expect the South Cobb expansion effort to pause but not derail. That could mean the new center would open later than her goal of 2026.
She hopes it wouldn’t extend much longer beyond that, as she knows the stakes for many South Cobb residents — from parents excited about welcoming a new baby to teenagers who need help managing traumatizing experiences — are high. Her agency isn’t the only group able to improve the health of underserved Cobb communities, but she thinks it plays an important role.
“We all have a piece of the puzzle to contribute,” she said. “We all, every single day, can figure out a way to make our community better.”
Allen Siegler is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Allen at asiegler@healthbeat.org.
