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“PARTNERS IN HEALTH” by Rick Nahmias |
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A well-known adage of Ben Weingart’s was “Create new ideas and things. It will make a better world.”
Though he could not have foreseen it, over the last six years Weingart Foundation headed an initiative to do just that. Starting in 2003 and culminating in late 2009, Weingart Foundation sponsored a visionary process that led to the creation of the Center for Community Health (CCH), a state-of-the-art integrated health facility in downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row District which will serve up to 9,000 people annually.
The Center for Community Health is not just unique for what it represents to its patients – a clean, well-staffed, modern-day facility completely dedicated to serving the comprehensive health needs of the indigent of the area – but it is equally notable to those in the healthcare and philanthropic worlds. Its creation and the long road to opening its doors has become a testament to an historic private-public partnership.
UNDERSTANDING THE NEED
In 2003, Weingart Foundation began the Skid Row Homeless Healthcare Initiative to reduce the suffering of the area’s homeless population by improving their health through increased access to coordinated and integrated services. This initiative was spurred in part by a report entitled “Neglect On The Streets,” assembled by Dr. Michael Cousineau, from work performed by him and his team at The Division of Community Health at USC’s Keck School of Medicine. Their report brought to light just how underserved the homeless of downtown Los Angeles were in all areas of healthcare services.
This report, also funded by Weingart Foundation, pointed out in painful detail that of LA’s homeless, the largest such population in the Country, thousands of individuals are located in and around Skid Row. Nearly half of these adults are mentally ill and have little to turn to for basic health resources besides hospital emergency rooms, facilities that by law cannot deny them life-saving services.
 Photo: Rick Nahmias
More so, consensus among experts is that without stable functional healthcare, the homeless will remain homeless. According to Jonathan Hunter, from The Corporation of Supportive Housing, “People without services won’t stay housed.”
HISTORIC COLLABORATION
A dedicated space where an integrated healthcare system offered comprehensive services under one roof was something completely foreign to this community, yet it was something that had been urgently needed for years. Even so, it was an extremely complex undertaking that did not come together swiftly or easily.
Of the partners that traveled the road with Weingart Foundation from the very beginning, the JWCH Institute, a private non-profit health agency with a 25-year history and mission of helping the underserved, was and still remains a key collaborator in the creation and ongoing day-to-day operations of the Center for Community Health.
 Photo: Eric Richardson/blogdowntown
Dr. Paul Gregerson, Medical Director for the JWCH Institute and the CCH’s Chief Medical Officer points out, “When Weingart Foundation got the results of Michael’s report, they pulled together all the agencies that worked down here and we began brainstorming and pulling together programs and funding for the gaps identified.”
Over time the main goal became clear: co-locating a variety of essential services in one dedicated building. Most of the housing developed for the homeless in LA County is in this five to ten block radius of Skid Row – shelters, transitional housing, and low cost housing all exist side by side. Creating a “one-stop-shop” exclusively for health needs in a well-situated location was bound to have an impact on the individuals living there.
“This was an amazing opportunity to impact the lives of the people we serve,” says Greg Scott, President and CEO of Weingart Center Association. A small primary health clinic run by JWCH had existed in Weingart Center, but the decision to move the space up the block to 522 South San Pedro Street allowed the footprint to more than double, from 9,000 to 21,000 square feet. With the help of Weingart Center Association, the largest health and human services agency in LA for the homeless, the building was donated and a capital campaign started that would eventually raise $6 million.
Another indispensable partner in the process was the Community Clinic Association of LA County, a private trade association for clinics which according to CEO, Gloria Rodriguez, took on a brokering role in “‘running interference’ and overcoming the numerous political roadblocks which arose, while continuing to help in the day-to-day planning for the clinic and coordinating the service providers.”
ROLLING UP THEIR SLEEVES
“Change is never easy,” says Fred Ali, President and CEO of Weingart Foundation. “In the first meeting we had with service providers, we invited about 10 foundations to join us, essentially, we used the power of money to challenge the various providers to come together and look for innovative ways to expand and improve healthcare on skid row – to develop a less fragmented, more coordinated system of care.”
[continued on page 2...]
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