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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Ellie Tam, MPH¹, Andrew Ma, BA¹, Praphaphone Insixiengmay, MPH¹, and Carolyn Barragan, BS². (1) Community and Facilities Services, Asian Pacific Health Care Venture, Inc., 1530 Hillhurst Ave., Suite 200, los angeles, CA 90027, 323-644-3880 ext.276, etam@aphcv.org, (2) Community and Facility Services, Asian Pacific Health Care Venture, 1530 Hillhurst Ave., Suite 200, Los Angeles, CA 90027

OBJECTIVES: How to increase Asians and Pacific Islanders (API) access to health care services through culturally appropriate and linguistically competent approaches in a health enrollment program. The review will discuss barriers for APIs to access services, limiting factors for APIs to enroll into public health insurances, and effective approaches to increase API access to health insurance in eliminating health disparities. ABSTRACT TEXT PURPOSE: Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Americans reside in the greater Los Angeles Area has a high uninsured rate since many may be self-employed or may be low-income families working in the service sector. Some of these low-income families may lack the knowledge about accessing varies public funded health insurance programs. METHODS: Outreaching through various venues such at API ethnic festivals, local clinics, and placing ads in API specific newspapers and magazines. Working with local school districts help in reaching to the low-income and uninsured families. Enrollment services provided were separated by the specific language that the outreach workers spoke. RESULTS: Experiences from the outreach and enrollment found that services need to be culturally competent, linguistically appropriate, and community centered. In a two-year period from January 2004 to December 2005, APHCV was able to reach a large number of APIs and enroll a total of 6318 clients into various public health insurance programs in Los Angeles County. CONCLUSIONS: Providing culturally competent, linguistically, appropriate, and community centered access to health enrollment programs has worked in increasing APIs access to health care services.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant in this session will be able to

• List 3 ways to increase access to health enrollment programs for APIs
• Describe some factors barriers to access to health enrollment programs
• Identify strategies on how clients came be retained in health enrollment programs

Keywords: Access to Health Care, Asian and Pacific Islander

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered