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HIGHLIGHT
May 28, 2008
State of Emergency: Access to Care in Los Angeles County
Conference Description
History
"Building Bridges to Optimum Health" is an ongoing series directed toward educating the community and creating an opportunity for interaction between the lay community, community based organizations, health care providers, the department of health services and academic medical centers.
The agendas for these forums are developed by community and then organized through a collaborative academic/community process. This has led to community educational seminars on topics ranging from preterm women's health, clinical research and research ethics to memory disorders, mental health, childhood asthma, environmental health, violence and most recently diabetes.
These collaborations have also enabled new relationships between community and academia to create new strategies to deliver effective educational messages and criterion for conducting the highest quality evidenced based research and care. It develops new research strategies that includes community input and supports true community engagement activities.
Conference Description
State of Emergency: Access to Care in Los Angeles County
Over the past several years, Los Angeles County has experienced a number of healthcare facility closures, particularly in communities with overwhelming burden of disease. This symposium will highlight a joint effort to identify geographic areas of health-related need within the County and to develop a tool for monitoring this need.
Our featured speakers will discuss
- 1) the history of health and healthcare delivery in Los Angeles County;
- 2) changes in healthcare supply measures; and
- 3) trends in local preventable hospitalizations rates.
As someone who cares about the community, we feel that you will find the event beneficial and informative.
Conference Priorities
i. Patients lack of access to new technology
ii. The cumbersome nature of the TAR process
iii. Transparency in the Medi-Cal process
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Agencies
The Charles Drew University
The Charles Drew University is the only academic health sciences center in an area of 1.6 million people-the largest urban underserved area in the United States. The university is also the nation's only dually designated Historically Black Graduate Institution and Hispanic Serving Health Professions School.
It was created from the ashes of the Watts Rebellion in 1965. Since 1971, The Charles Drew University has graduated over 500 medical doctors, 2,500 specialist physicians, 2,000 physician assistants and hundreds of other, mainly minority, health professionals. Research shows that the vast majority of these professionals are still serving the people in greatest need a decade or more after graduation.
The university performs high quality research that focuses on key health issues that affect minority and underserved populations, under the direction of Keith Norris, M.D. FACP and Vice President for Research at the Charles Drew University. Of the 3,419 institutions funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Charles Drew University ranked 180th in the level of funding, ahead of many much larger schools. Its College of Science and Health ranks seventh among NIH-funded colleges in the U.S. with comparable specializations.
Healthy African American Families
Healthy African American Families is a non-profit, community-serving agency whose mission is to improve the health outcomes of African American and Latino communities in Los Angeles County by enhancing the quality of care and by advancing social progress through education, training, and collaborative partnering with community, academia, researchers, and government.
HAAF is a leader in developing partnerships with institutions such as Drew University, UCLA, and RAND that involve community participatory research. We are committed to educating community researchers and those who provide services about how to work in partnership with African American and Latino communities to reduce the racial disparities in family health outcomes.
HAAF coaches community service providers on how to use language, communication strategies and presentation styles that are acceptable and understandable by the communities they are trying to serve while emphasizing that families and the community must be at the center of any efforts to improve health, rather than mere consumers of services. HAAF is dedicated to sharing knowledge with members of our community on how to operate successfully and competently in society.
The Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program
The Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program fosters the development of physician-leaders who will transform health and health care in this country. Scholars will be equipped to work with communities, organizations, practitioners and policy makers to conduct innovative research important to enhancing the health and well being in these communities.
The program's major focus emphasizes community-based research and leadership training. Scholars integrate their clinical training with skills in program development and research methods in order to address the challenges posed by the U.S. healthcare system, community health and health services research.
To build these skills, Scholars engage in graduate-level study and mentored research in a university-based post-residency training program. The Clinical Scholars Program generally involves two years' study and research; up to 20 percent of a scholar's time is spent in maintaining clinical skills.
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Acknowledgements
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars
Robert H. Brook, M.D.
Carol M. Mangione, M.D.
Kenneth B. Wells, M.D.
Charles Drew University
Keith C. Norris, MD, FACP
Dr. Richard S. Baker
Healthy African American Families (HAAF)
Loretta Jones, M.A.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars
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Robert H. Brook, M.D.
Robert H. Brook, M.D., Sc. D., F.A.C.P. is Vice-President and Director of RAND Health, and Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UCLA where he co-directs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program. He has been on the medical school faculty at UCLA since 1974, and divides his research time between UCLA and RAND.
A prolific scholar, Dr. Brook conducted pioneering work in the field of quality measurement. He operationalized the concept of appropriateness by establishing the scientific basis for determining whether various medical and surgical procedures were being used appropriately. More than any other individual, he is responsible for focusing policymakers' attention on quality-of-care issues and their implications for the nation's health. Most of the quality of care and health status measures being used today throughout the developed world were developed by Dr. Brook or by research teams that he led.
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Carol M. Mangione, M.D.
Carol M. Mangione, M.D., M.S.P.H., is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UCLA, and is also a consultant in the RAND Health Program. Dr. Mangione is the Director of the NIA funded UCLA Resource Center for Minority Aging Research and is Co-Director of the UCLA Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program. She completed medical school and a primary care residency at the University of California at San Francisco, and the Faculty Development Post-doctoral Fellowship in general internal medicine and her public health degree at Harvard University.
Dr. Mangione's research focuses on the care that older Latinos and African Americans with diabetes receive. As part of this research agenda she is a principal investigator for a project funded by the Centers for Disease Control to study the quality of care for persons from ethnic and racial minority groups with diabetes in managed care settings. Dr. Mangione is currently conducting a community-based empowerment intervention among older Latinos and African Americans with diabetes to improve their self-care skills and has a long-standing interest in the relationship between visual disability, falls and functional decline among the elderly. She is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
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Kenneth B. Wells, M.D.
Kenneth B. Wells, M.D., M.P.H. is Professor-in-Residence of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute & Hospital and of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health, and a Senior Scientist at RAND. He is a psychiatrist and health services researcher. Dr. Wells is the Principal Investigator of the UCLA/RAND Center for Research on Quality in Managed Care funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and of Partners in Care, a study of quality improvement for depression in managed, primary care, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, The MacArthur Foundation, and the National Institute of Mental Health.
Dr. Wells directs the UCLA-Semel Institute Health Services Research Center, which focuses on improving quality of care for mental health disorders across the lifespan. He is a Co-Director of the UCLA Clinical Scholars program, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Wells is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He was the first recipient of the Young Investigator Award and also received the Distinguished Investigator Award of Academy Health, as well as the Senior Health Services Research Award and the Research Prize (lifetime achievement) of the American Psychiatric Association.
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Charles Drew University
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Keith C. Norris, MD, FACP, Vice President for Research
Dr. Richard S. Baker, Dean, College of Medicine
The mission of the Charles Drew University is to conduct education and research in the context of community service in order to train physicians and allied health professionals to provide care with excellence and compassion, especially to underserved populations. The Charles Drew University Research Enterprise is dedicated to closing the gap on health care disparities among underserved and ethnic minority populations and so much more.
The important work done by our researchers brings attention to health issues and diseases that disproportionately affect minorities and the poor. Diabetes, hypertension, cancer, reproductive health, chronic kidney disease, neuro-psychiatric disorders and HIV/AIDS are just a few of the areas where Charles Drew University researchers, faculty and staff members make a difference. Our nationally and internationally renowned researchers are breaking new ground, integrating research advances into the basic sciences and setting new standards in healthcare disparities research for underserved communities.
In July 2007, the University was awarded a $9.5 million NIH-NCRR grant to lead a Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Translational Research Network to reduce health disparities and strengthen the research capacity of each of the 18 partner institution across the consortia.
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Healthy African American Families (HAAF)
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Loretta Jones, M.A.,
Executive Director
Healthy African American Families is a non-profit, community-serving agency whose mission is to improve the health outcomes of African American and Latino communities in Los Angeles County by enhancing the quality of care and by advancing social progress through education, training, and collaborative partnering with community, academia, researchers, and government. HAAF is a leader in developing partnerships with institutions such as Drew University, UCLA, and RAND that involve community participatory research.
We are committed to educating community researchers and those who provide services about how to work in partnership with African American and Latino communities to reduce the racial disparities in family health outcomes. HAAF coaches community service providers on how to use language, communication strategies and presentation styles that are acceptable and understandable by the communities they are trying to serve while emphasizing that families and the community must be at the center of any efforts to improve health, rather than mere consumers of services. HAAF is dedicated to sharing knowledge with members of our community on how to operate successfully and competently in society.
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Presentations
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AGENCY INFORMATION
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Clinical Scholars
University of California, Los Angeles
911 Broxton Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310.794.2268
Charles Drew University
11705 Deputy Yamamoto Pl., Ste. B
Lynwood, CA 90262
323.249.5702
www.cdrewu.edu
Healthy African American Families
3756 Santa Rosalia Drive
Suite 320
Los Angeles, CA 90008
323.292.2002
www.haaf2.org
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