Grantees Address Need for Accessible, Health-related Services in Central Valley...continue from cover
To reach the Hmong population, with its traditionally oral culture and English-language barriers, MLFC uses one-on-one and small-group health education opportunities and is developing 20 “talk shows” to be aired on the Southeast Asian Merced County cable television station. Shows will also be available on videotape. Subjects range from nutrition, immunizations and other aspects of health promotion and disease prevention to the safe use of chemicals in farming. “Workers receiving direction from landowner-farmers use pesticides and fertilizers properly, but when they farm their own small community garden plots, they don’t know how to use the chemicals because they can’t read—or don’t have—instructions,” said Chue Wang Xiong, MLFC’s media health counselor. “Consequently, the workers and their families are exposed to those poisons directly and indirectly through the produce grown.” Xiong is working with 40 Hmong farming families to teach safe farming practices. Xiong, who was a physician assistant in the Thai refugee camps that housed many fleeing Laotians, also educates families about other aspects of health promotion and disease prevention and provides resource information for health care treatment. School-based Clinics Community Medical Centers, Inc. (CMC), bridges geographic health care access barriers with nine clinics that provide services to more than 30,000 northern Central Valley residents. TCWF provided CMC with a two-year, $90,000 grant for core operating support towards its efforts to establish a clinic linkage at El Dorado Elementary School and a school-based clinic at Lawrence Elementary in Lodi, which opened last October. “We’re excited about being able to serve these communities through schools,” said Michael Kirkpatrick, chief executive officer. “Through a partnership with the Lodi Unified School District and the community, we were able to develop a new clinical service site at Lawrence, complete with exam rooms and equipment.” In the first six months of operation, the Lawrence clinic provided services to almost 200 children and their families. CMC staffs the clinic three half-days a week. In addition to medical personnel, CMC also has a Medi-Cal eligibility worker to help patients apply for benefits and learn about other available resources. The school district furnishes the site, provides maintenance services and arranges client appointments. At El Dorado Elementary School in Stockton, where operations began in November 2000, professional medical staff from nearby Channel Medical Center use school facilities to provide child health and disability exams, health screenings and preventive medical services, resource and medical referrals, and case management and health education. “Schools are natural community focal points,” said Alicia Procello, TCWF program director. “School-based health centers build on that and can become powerful deliverers of health promotion and disease prevention services.” Advocacy and Consumer Education Services The Fresno Health Consumer Center (FHCC) was established in 1998 by Central California Legal Services to improve health care access for Fresno County’s most vulnerable and medically underserved people. Almost 38 percent of Fresno County’s children live in poverty. The county has many uninsured and underinsured working poor, as well as unemployed residents whose health care needs often go unaddressed. “One of the most difficult aspects of health care is educating and empowering people to make sure their rights to health care are enforced,” said Manuel Romero, FHCC project director. “Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits any agency receiving federal funds — including medical facilities and providers — from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin, and that applies to language barriers.” FHCC received a two-year, $90,000 grant from TCWF for core operating support to: teach consumers how to resolve their health care access problems; represent consumers in formal proceedings; educate community service providers about the health care options available to their clients and assist them in their enrollment efforts; and advocate for increased access to care for underserved families. FHCC is working with other community-based organizations in the Multicultural Community Alliance (MCA) to enroll the medically underserved residents in the Medi-Cal and Healthy Families public health insurance programs. Tables and booths are staffed in migrant camps and at community events to help residents solve health care access problems. A monthly Spanish-language radio show combines health education with information on empowering listeners to access health care resources. “In the Valley, we have a difficult task because of the great diversity and large population of underserved,” Romero said.
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Summer 2002
| INSIDE:
Central Valley Grantees Strive To Increase At-risk Resident's Access to Health Services Student group fosters future physicians Elders benefit from exercise program |
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