A new county health assessment unveiled Friday put hard numbers on a problem many Charlotte families already know too well: Latino residents in Mecklenburg County are far less likely to have a go-to doctor. Roughly four in ten Latino residents say they do not have a regular primary care provider, a shortfall that public health staff and community partners warned at the Meck Design conference is pushing people toward costly emergency rooms, leaving many uninsured and weakening basic preventive care.
Mecklenburg County Public Health walked attendees through the 2025 Community Health Assessment at Meck Design, following the county’s release of the full report earlier this year. According to reporting by WFAE, the assessment found that 40% of Latino residents in Mecklenburg County lack a primary care doctor, compared with 17% of county residents overall, and that nearly 70,000 Latino residents are uninsured. Mecklenburg County Public Health says the CHA will serve as the roadmap for a Community Health Improvement Plan aimed at closing those gaps.
Why access is lagging
Local advocates and researchers point to a familiar list of barriers: language, cost, fear tied to immigration status and a shortage of Spanish-speaking clinicians. Those challenges are not unique to Charlotte. A statewide Latino survey conducted by the Camino Research Institute and summarized by WUNC found similar access problems across North Carolina, including high uninsured rates and strong demand for Spanish-language services.
“Sometimes people don't know what to do, or where to go, when they need to seek care,” Karina Gonzalez, the county’s Latino/Hispanic engagement program manager, told attendees. To help close that knowledge gap, the department has trained 10 certified Latino community health workers to connect residents with clinics and other resources, WFAE reported.
County response and next steps
The CHA highlights five priority areas, including access to care, chronic disease and maternal and child health. County officials say Meck Design is the opening move in a co-design process to turn all that data into an actual game plan. According to Mecklenburg County Public Health and conference organizers, the sessions are meant to surface community-led strategies that will feed into the 2026 Community Health Improvement Plan. Meck Design workshops brought residents, public health staff and system leaders into the same rooms to prototype early ideas for outreach and services, according to event materials.
Officials also frame the local gap as part of a national story about primary care being perpetually underfunded. National analyses point to persistent workforce strain and historically low spending on primary care, which make it harder to expand services in under-served communities. The Milbank Memorial Fund's 2026 Primary Care Scorecard documents those trends and argues for more sustained investment in front-line care, according to the Milbank Memorial Fund.
County leaders say the CHA offers a blueprint for immediate moves, including more bilingual outreach, scaling up community health workers and strengthening insurance navigation. The real test, they acknowledge, will be whether those ideas move from workshop walls to on-the-ground change. Participants at Meck Design started co-creating early recommendations, and county staff say the coming months will focus on turning those prototypes into measurable actions that can be tracked in the CHIP, according to South Piedmont AHEC.
