Project ALTO and Pacoima diabetes collaborative: A community collaborative 3-year partnership program

Project ALTO (PA) a California-Endowment funded (2005) project of Mission Community Hospital, is a not-for-profit community-hospital in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. The goal of this project is to identify, educate, and screen low-income, uninsured Hispanics. PA identifies and screens individuals at community events and health fairs, referring low-income persons at high risk for diabetes and with no other access to care to MEND (Meeting Each Need with Dignity), local free clinics, staffed by volunteers and funded by all the hospitals within SPA 2. Collaborative partners include the Pacoima Diabetes Collaborative, funded (2006) to identify gaps in PA and to strengthen it. The Diabetes Collaborative provides health benefit screening at PA events, forms walking groups from interested community groups and is mandated to work toward identifying other community clinics with which to partner and to develop a group model for diabetes medical appointments, which allows clinics to increase their capacity without added costs. PA and the Collaborative work together providing diabetes education and health access to the community that each service. Key to the structural changes in the community has been the role that appropriately delivered, culturally sensitive disease management education has played in giving community members the information they need to better control their lives, communicate with their health care providers and understand the information that is given back to them.

Results of this 3 year program will be presented and discussed as well as future implications concerning structural change in communities through community-based partnerships.