Eight South LA community groups awarded Center/DHHS grants to provide preventive health care to low-income seniors

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research awarded $140,000 in grants to eight community organizations whose outreach pilot projects will increase use of community preventive services among low-income African-Americans and Latinos age 50 and older in South Los Angeles.

Getting simple preventative health care, such as flu shots and cholesterol tests, can save lives and money.  Yet participation rates for underserved groups are far below ― sometimes half ― that of national goals for preventive health care, according to Center research.

The Center's Health Aging Partnerships in Preventative Initiative (HAPPI) awarded the grants with funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Grant recipients will partner with Southside Coalition of Community Health Centers and other health providers, who will provide preventive care:  

Recipients of $20,000 award/Participating clinic  

• Black Women for Wellness/To Help Everyone Clinic
• New Vision Christian Fellowship/ To Help Everyone Clinic
• Girls Club of Los Angeles/ To Help Everyone Clinic
• Worksite Wellness LA/ South Central Family Health Center
• Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches/South Central Family Health Center
• Esperanza Community Housing/St John's Well Child and Family Center

Recipients of $10,000 award (Participants choose their provider)  

• Cedars-Sinai Coach for Kids and their Families
• California Black Women's Health Project

The pilot projects aim to improve awareness among older African-Americans and Latinos of the benefits in using clinical preventive services. Projects will also increase clinics' capacity for providing six types of those services ― mammograms, pap smears, colon cancer screenings, cholesterol tests, and flu and pneumococcal immunizations.   South LA seniors are at high risk of having easily-preventable health conditions and diseases," said Peggy Toy, director of the Center's Health DATA Program and HAPPI project director. "These grants will empower the groups that know their communities best to enable them to get the preventive care they need and which everyone should have access to."   According to a Center study that guided development of the pilot projects, national flu shot rates for African-Americans and Latinos 65 and older in 2012 were 52 percent and 58 percent, respectively. These rates are more than 30 percentage points below the national Healthy People 2020 goal of 90 percent.   Rates of colorectal screening for Latinos and African-Americans age 50-75, 47 percent and 55 percent, respectively, were also far below the Healthy People 2020 Goal of 71 percent. Center Faculty Associate Janet C. Frank and Kathryn Kietzman, evaluation director of HAPPI, co-authored the study.   

About the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) is one of the nation’s leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health policy information for California. UCLA CHPR improves the public’s health through high quality, objective, and evidence-based research and data that informs effective policymaking. UCLA CHPR is the home of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) and is part of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. For more information, visit healthpolicy.ucla.edu.