A Campus-Community Partnership to Narrow the Health Care Access Gap for Los Angeles' Undocumented Population

Issue: An estimated 700,000 undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles County were excluded from the Affordable Care Act, leaving them without access to affordable health care services. In October 2014, LA County launched the My Health LA program to provide free primary care services for those who continue to be ineligible for health coverage.

Description: In order to reach its intended participants, My Health LA must be promoted beyond just the clinic setting through a community-integrated campaign. Students of Color for Public Health (SCPH), an organization at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, created a campus-community partnership to identify high-need areas in LA County with low enrollment in My Health LA and to subsequently develop targeted outreach and communication strategies.

Lessons learned: SCPH has leveraged the breadth of public health disciplines represented by its members (e.g. community health sciences, health policy/management, and environmental health sciences), linked with existing campus resources (i.e. UCLA Global Media Center for Social Impact), and established an ongoing collaboration with community groups including LA Health4All Coalition and Community Clinic Association of LA County. This poster will describe the successes and challenges of participating in a multi-partner collaborative effort, and explain the process of jointly developing appropriate outreach and communications tools.

Recommendations: SCPH’s contributions to expand healthcare access for undocumented Angelenos can provide a framework for similar collaborative approaches. Establishing formal relationships between university student groups and their surrounding community maximizes the resources of contributing partners, reaches across academic and sector silos, and improves student learning.