Winter 2000/2001

Orange County's Changing Demographics Prompt Fresh Look at Health Care Services

he majority of Orange County’s 2.8 million residents are white with an average annual income of $65,900. This is the typical image of Orange County.

What is missing in this picture is an increasingly diverse population in which whites will be the minority within the next five years. More than 300,000 people, or 10.5 percent of the county’s population, live below the federal poverty level, and 17 percent of the population has no health insurance. 

“Orange County is typical of several counties in California that have long-time reputations as havens for the wealthy but actually obscure serious pockets of poverty and a lack of preventive health care services for low-income residents, many of whom are immigrants and people of color,” said Gary L. Yates, president and CEO of The California Wellness Foundation. “As a statewide funder with a mission of improving health, it is important for TCWF to provide grants to these areas as well as those that are more well known for having underserved populations.”

Recognizing that demographic changes can significantly affect the health of entire communities, TCWF funds agencies in areas facing unprecedented health needs. In the third largest county in California, TCWF’s Orange County Grantees provide prime examples of how to help close this gap.

“We appreciate The California Wellness Foundation’s attention to the underserved in Orange County,” said Felix Schwarz, executive director of the Health Care Council of Orange County, the federally designated Area Health Education Center for Orange County. 

“We have big problems that often go unrecognized, so funding is very hard to come by,” Schwarz said. “And we don’t have many of the facilities other counties take for granted, such as a county hospital and veterans’ and mental health facilities.”

Schwarz added that the health care system does not have enough personnel who speak or understand many of the languages spoken in Orange County, where 30 percent of the population is Latino.

The Health Care Council recently received a two-year, $200,000 grant from TCWF to expand a minority nursing education program. The Council works with five colleges and 10 community clinics to build long-term nursing career ladders for minority students.

“There’s a dearth of people of color in the nursing profession, people who know and understand ethnic communities and their languages,” said TCWF Senior Program Officer Frances Jemmott. 

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