G-2308-19396

AltaMed Health Services (AltaMed) is a network of health centers committed to eliminating disparities in health care access and outcomes by providing superior quality health and human services through an integrated delivery system for Latino, multi-ethnic and often overlooked communities in Southern California.

For the past three years, AltaMed has addressed the need for oral health equity for
underserved populations through care, education, and advocacy training for interested and driven community members. The organization has always promoted self-advocacy and has developed several programs to support community members to participate in the advocacy process more directly.
Previously, AltaMed received a CareQuest Institute grant to support the creation of the Community Organizing and Research Engagement initiative (CORE), which was designed to engage the community in Southeast Los Angeles (SELA) through to resident leadership groups: SELA Health Allies (SHA) and SELA Youth Health Allies (SYHA). The CORE team was operated within the AltaMed Institute for Health Equity and graduated 31 community members, trained 135 youths in advocacy around social determinants of health, and partnered with Ohio State University to co-develop a research and evaluation framework to assess the efficacy of these resident training programs and their relative outcomes. These various advocacy groups were established as part of a larger, community-led campaign to raise awareness about the impact of sugary beverages on oral health, particularly in local food pantries, and their membership is representative of residents throughout Los Angeles and Orange County, CA.

Funding by CareQuest Institute presents an opportunity for AltaMed’s CORE team to continue engaging patient-community members in a community-driven framework using CBPR methodologies to build capacity and strength in SELA. Through centering voices, capturing experiences, and sharing solutions, CORE aims to build community power and provide opportunities for members with lived experiences to engage in policy, system, and environmental change strategies that impact their community. The Community Engaged Network (CEN), part of the CORE mobilizing and organizing arm, will be tapped to engage with members around oral health advocacy to increase participation in CORE community organizing groups such as SELA Health Allies (SHA). SHA has addressed oral health inequities in SELA through ongoing advocacy, community capacity building, health organizing, peer mobilizing, and awareness campaigns on Medi-Cal/Denti-Cal expansion.

AltaMed’s goal for the proposed Botas Sobre el Terreno (BST) (Boots on the Ground) project is to enhance the capacity of AltaMed patients and community members by prioritizing their voices, experiences, and shared solutions to create a process of transformative oral health patient engagement and system changes.

AltaMed will establish a bootcamp to equip CEN and Research Ambassadors Network (RAN) members with skills in co-designing and executing research and evaluation initiatives. This four-day training will provide the skills and empower 16 bootcamp participants to lead community-driven advocacy projects focused on oral health equity.

AltaMed’s CORE team will work with the Community Health Organizer (CHO) to conduct community-led research in the SELA area. The focus of the research will be to understand the experiences of community members when accessing oral healthcare and will lead to the development of an advocacy toolkit.

A CBPR project will be initiated to gather the experiences of the SELA community members regarding oral healthcare. The project will incorporate best practices from AltaMed's previous work, including an award-winning HIV prevention YouTube novela called "Sin Verguenza" and a fotonovela to increase colorectal cancer screening. The narratives collected will highlight entrenched obstacles, latent fears, promising breakthroughs, and perceptions of oral health services. Targeted focus group/solution sessions will involve AltaMed providers, patient-facing staff, medical residents, fellows, and community stakeholders and will identify and develop recommendations for system change.
Two awareness campaigns will be developed in collaboration with community members, targeting the community and the AltaMed provider, dental care staff, and decisionmakers.

This request is for $150,000 which amounts to <1% of the organization’s overall
budget. CareQuest Institute grant funds will be applied to support salaries, travel/mileage costs to attend community meetings and for 2 team members to attend health advocacy conferences, laptops for Community Health Organizer and Community Consultants, venue costs for capacity building bootcamp, office supplies for program materials, participants incentives (T-shirts, pens, etc.), food and beverage costs for 10 community meetings/trainings, gift cards for community member stipends, and two contracted community consultants to help steer development.