Megan Wingfield

Improving community and preventative health is a top priority, starting with a tiered approach that addresses immediate nutritional needs and long-term healthy habits. To combat rising rates of obesity and diabetes in Kentucky, I support the following evidence-based policies:

• Ensuring Nutritional Security: We must fully fund essential programs that provide healthy foods to our residents, including SNAP, WIC, and the USDA food programs.
• Investing in Youth Health: I advocate for increased funding for both research and community programs specifically designed to help school-aged children form healthy habits early in life.
• Expanding Healthcare Access: I support advancing “Medicaid for All” to ensure every worker can access preventative care without financial hardship. We must also protect rural healthcare infrastructure, as current proposed cuts put 35 rural Kentucky hospitals at risk of closure.
• Improving Community Accessibility: Our strategy must ensure that all households in need have physical and financial access to both nutrition and community health programs.

Addressing Kentucky’s water quality degradation, particularly the contamination from coal ash dumps and acid mine drainage, requires a commitment to evidence-based governance and technical precision. My policy approach centers on the belief that we must ensure we have dedicated experts in these fields on staff to manage these complex environmental threats. While I am clear on the end result we must accomplish—clean, safe groundwater and streams for every Kentuckian—I recognize that achieving this requires a team of specialists to ensure we are giving our Commonwealth the best possible chance at a successful recovery.

To effectively address these challenges, I would implement the following policy framework:

• Expert-Led Oversight: I will prioritize the recruitment and retention of environmental scientists and hydrologists within our state agencies to oversee the remediation of coal ash sites and acid mine drainage.
• Accountability for Polluters: We must ensure that those responsible for environmental degradation are held accountable. This includes strengthening protections against coal companies that have historically been permitted to ignore safety rules or bypass critical environmental safeguards.
• Infrastructure Investment: I support leveraging federal and state resources to modernize water treatment facilities and implement advanced filtration systems in communities currently impacted by legacy mining contaminants.

Ultimately, protecting our water is about protecting the health and economic future of Kentucky families. By empowering a team of experts to guide our regulatory and restoration efforts, we can move past political rhetoric and deliver the practical, science-based solutions our communities deserve.

We need to focus on the actual issues behind the data center conversations, and that starts with a commitment to open and transparent governance when it comes to data center contracts. These projects often involve foreign interests and massive corporate giveaways that have been forced into Kentucky communities without ratepayer protections or public input.

I support policies that prioritize community-led decision-making and mandatory disclosure regarding what these data centers are for. We are not anti-technology, but we are pro-communities making their own decisions about their resources. For too long, the people who have to live with these projects, our workers, farmers, and local leaders, have been excluded from the process. These policies are right for Kentucky because they shift the focus back to public interest and ensure that any development deliver real benefits, respect our community, and improve our quality of life rather than just serving special interests.

I believe healthcare is a fundamental right. To combat falling vaccination rates and manage infectious diseases effectively, my policy platform focuses on expanding healthcare access and restoring trust through equitable, community-driven care. If elected to Congress, I would advocate for the following:

• Expanding Access to Care: I advocate for Medicaid for All to eliminate financial barriers to routine preventative care, including vaccinations. This is critical as current proposals threaten to cut Medicaid funding, which would place over 200,000 Kentuckians at risk of losing coverage.
• Protecting Rural Healthcare Infrastructure: Addressing vaccine hesitancy requires stable local medical infrastructure. Current budget projections show that proposed cuts place 35 rural Kentucky hospitals and 20,000 healthcare jobs at risk; I am committed to protecting these facilities to ensure localized access to medical treatments and public health education.
• Supporting Scientific Research and Advocacy: I support robust funding for federal scientific initiatives and the integration of educated patient advocates into healthcare decision-making. Promoting non-partisan, evidence-based health policies is essential to communicating the safety and efficacy of vaccines to skeptical communities.