Community-Academic partnering to monitor preventable hospitalizations and build community capacity for health advocacy and planning

The Los Angeles (L.A.) County Medical Association has called healthcare conditions in South Los Angeles a crisis. More people die from lung cancer, breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease, HIV, and stroke in South Los Angeles than any other area in L.A. County. South Los Angeles, with a population over 1 million, has the highest percentage of uninsured children and the second highest percentage of uninsured adults in all of L.A. County. After federal funding was terminated last year, the community's only public hospital, Martin Luther King-Harbor Medical Center, was forced to close.

In partnership with the community serving agency, Healthy African American Families (HAAF), we conducted stakeholder interviews in South L.A. and identified access to care as the community's primary concern. The Institute of Medicine has recommended that preventable hospitalizations be used to monitor access to health services over time. Using community-partnered participatory research principles of capacity building and co-learning, we conducted a secondary data analysis of California Patient Discharge Data to develop an adult preventable hospitalization report card for Los Angeles County. During the study period (2001-2005), South Los Angeles had the highest standardized rates of preventable hospitalizations in L.A. County (standardized by age, race/ethnicity, and gender).

The process and results of this study will give HAAF and others in the community a sustainable tool for monitoring health needs, providing information for establishing local health priorities, and allocating resources. This project may inform future community partnered planning activities to address access to care in underserved areas.