Immigrant Health Care: Present Challenges and Future Solutions with discussants Fabian Nunez, Ellen Wu, Jane Garcia, and Alice Chen moderated by Dr. Brenda Wade
Governor Schwarzenegger recently announced his plan to "share the burden" of health-care costs among all California residents, including immigrants who are not U.S. citizens. How will the state provide resources for a population that is uninsured and lacking access to care? Our panel of experts will provide insights on policy, education and health-care changes for present and future immigrants who live in California- Commonwealth Club of California
Bio
Alice Chen
Dr. Chen's primary interest is in issues of health care access, particularly in how poverty, cultural differences, and policy intersect to create barriers to care. Her work has focused on improving access to quality healthcare for limited English health consumers through community based, public health, governmental, and philanthropic initiatives. She was previously a Soros Physician Advocacy Fellowship at the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum and a Health Policy Scholar in Residence at The California Endowment, where she oversaw its language access grant making program. She is a member of the Scholars Network for Hablamos Juntos, Robert Wood Johnson's initiative to improve patient-provider communication for Latinos, and a board member of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care. She has served on numerous regional and state advisory committees on cultural and linguistic access. She is currently working with the California Academy of Family Physicians to develop a CME course for physicians on language barriers in health care, the Alameda County Coalition for Language Access in Healthcare to develop county-specific initiatives to improve language access, and the advocacy group PALS for health to educate limited English speaking patients on how to navigate the U.S. healthcare system.
Dr. Chen is a 2000 graduate of Stanford University Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health in 2001. Her training includes a primary care internal medicine residency and chief residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA, and the CFHU Fellowship.
Jane Garcia
Jane Garcia is the Chief Executive Officer of La Clinica de La Raza, Inc. headquartered in Oakland, California. La Clinica is the largest community based primary health care centers in the Bay Area with an annual operating budget of $49.2 million. As the largest employer of the Fruitvale area, La Clinica employs close to 500 full time staff and serves nearly 47,000 members, the majority of which are low income, working, uninsured community members.
Under Garcia's leadership, La Clinica provides a comprehensive program with the full gamut of medical services and ancillary services including Dental, Eye, Mental Health and Health Education in 3 counties: Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano.
The East Bay Business Times recently listed La Clinica as the second largest non-profit organization in the Bay Area! The Hispanic Business listed La Clinica as the fifth leading U.S. nonprofit organization in service to Latinos. She received her BA from Yale University and her Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley.
Fabian Nunez
Fabian Núñez has been a labor union adviser and a Democratic politician. He served three-two year terms as a member of the State Assembly, leaving office late in 2008. During his last two terms, Nunez was the Assembly Speaker, the 66th person to hold that position.
Brenda Wade
Dr. Brenda Wade, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco, California, specializes in couples and family therapy, with a private practice that reaches nationwide. A protege of the world-renowned author and therapist Dr. Virginia Satir, her approach is both humanistic and practical. Dr. Wade's expertise has blossomed into a colorful array of professional success as author, television host, producer, and talk show guest, keynote speaker and workshop facilitator.
Ellen Wu
Ellen Wu is the Executive Director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. Ellen Wu is a graduate of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles and has worked with the culturally diverse low-income and uninsured population for the past 10 years. She was the Director of Health Education and Cultural/Linguistic Services at the Alameda Alliance for Health and served as the co-chair of the California Department of Health Services' Cultural and Linguistic Services Standards Task Force. She conducted presentations at the American Public Health Association's Annual Conference on "Developing a Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Member Satisfaction Survey" and at the National Conference on Quality Health Care for Culturally Diverse Populations on "Responding to the Community."
Prior to her work in managed care, she coordinated trainings throughout California for perinatal Medi-Cal providers and provided direct services as a health educator at the Valley Community Clinic in Los Angeles. She also has extensive experience in HIV education through her work at the AIDS Project Los Angeles Hotline and outreach program.
I found Dr. Chen's list of barriers with her distinction between the likelihood of immigrants getting care for an acute problem vs. care for a chronic issue enlightening.
We, at New Routes have 3 projects in CA dedicated to improving the health of new immigrants by using local media.
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