Ensuring Every Family Can Thrive

Everywhere Lisa goes, families tell her the same thing: the kitchen table math just doesn’t add up anymore. Housing and utilities keep climbing. Child care can cost more than a mortgage. Groceries and gas eat through paychecks. Raising a family has never been more expensive, and too many parents are left trying to figure out how to stretch each dollar just a little further. 

As the daughter of an immigrant mom who cleaned houses and cared for other families’ kids, Lisa understands. When her mom struggled to make ends meet, programs like Medicaid, free school lunch, and Pell Grants kept them afloat and gave Lisa a shot at the future she’s building now as an expecting mom herself. 

Lisa knows healthcare and affordability are the two biggest challenges families face today. Ensuring healthy starts for parents and kids while making it possible for families to raise children without going broke isn’t just policy, it’s personal.

Care Before, During, and After Birth

Too many Virginians face barriers to affordable, quality care before, during, and after childbirth. In VA-01, families in several localities live in maternity care deserts, often driving an hour or more just to access prenatal or delivery services. Out-of-pocket costs pile up, programs like WIC are struggling to keep pace with inflation, and most workers don’t have access to paid family leave. Meanwhile, Rob Wittman backed cuts to Medicaid, the largest single payer for maternity care nationwide. Lisa will protect access to care and lower costs so parents and kids can thrive.

Lisa’s Solutions

• Expand the perinatal workforce by investing in nurses, midwives, physician assistants, doulas, and other community birth workers, so families have trusted care before, during, and after birth. 

• Guarantee paid family & medical leave of at least 12 weeks to care for a newborn or newly adopted child without risking your job or paycheck. 

• End maternity care deserts by protecting rural hospitals and creating grants to reopen and sustain maternity wards in underserved counties.

• Cover modern maternal care by requiring state Medicaid programs to pay for telehealth, doulas, and midwives, including tribal midwives. 

• Strengthen nutrition support by extending WIC eligibility through two years postpartum and during breastfeeding, and by stopping the harmful cuts to WIC and SNAP benefits in the Big Beautiful Bill.

• Lower out-of-pocket costs for prenatal visits, medications, and preventative care, and protect and strengthen the Affordable Care Act.

• Protect reproductive freedom by restoring Roe, safeguarding access to contraception and IVF, and blocking any national abortion ban.

• Expand access to family building by pushing insurers to cover more fertility treatments so that not just those able to conceive without fertility treatments are awarded the opportunity to start their family.

Making Raising Kids Possible

Families across Virginia are facing unprecedented financial pressure. Childcare is too expensive, essentials like diapers and formula cost more, and too many childcare workers remain underpaid, leaving many programs understaffed and struggling to meet demand. Public schools are stretched thin and tax credits don’t go far enough. No family should have to choose between covering necessities or putting food on the table. Lisa has experienced these challenges firsthand, and she’ll fight with urgency to lower the cost of living, strengthen unions, and ensure Virginia families have the security and stability they deserve.

Lisa’s Solutions

• Make childcare affordable by capping expenses at 7% of family income and making care free for families under 200% of the federal poverty line. 

• Increase wages for early childhood educators and home-based care workers, and offer scholarships, training, and tuition support to grow the workforce. 

• Cut prices on baby essentials by fighting to end tariffs on diapers, cribs, strollers, and car seats.

• Put more money in families’ pockets by raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour and passing the PRO Act so parents have the ability to negotiate for fair wages and benefits. 

• Expand family tax cuts by reinstating the fully refundable Child Tax Credit and increasing the Dependent Care FSA limit.

• Strengthen public schools and establish universal pre-K by investing in school facilities, teacher pay, and after-school programs.

• Guarantee healthy school meals by supporting legislation such as the Universal School Meals Program Act to ensure that every child has access to free nutritious meals during the school year, after school, in the summer, and at child care.