The health of South Los Angeles (L.A.) continues to deteriorate – chronic institutional underfunding of health care services, substandard environmental and living conditions, and lack of necessary health services has contributed to this growing health and human rights crisis. Addressing the fundamental crisis of health and human rights in South L.A. has become a key priority of the L.A. CAFA collaborative.

In June 2009, the L.A. CAFA Collaborative joined with other advocates for health and human rights to host the First Annual South Los Angeles Health and Human Rights Conference. Over 740 community residents and leaders, including County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles County Director of Public Health. Several international human rights groups also attended. We highlighted local solutions and demonstrated the effectiveness of community-led, place-based, and results-oriented approaches to healthier communities and human rights. Since then, hundreds of community members have convened in workgroups to articulate the barriers to health and human rights and share ideas for addressing them.

In December 2010, on International Human Rights Day, the L.A. CAFA Collaborative and other human rights advocates unveiled the South Los Angeles Declaration of Health and Human Rights, the culmination of the work that began at our June Health and Human Rights conference and continued through months of workgroup meetings. In a moving ceremony on the grounds of Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital in South Los Angeles, staff and residents unveiled a historic people’s call to action to push for measurable improvements in health and human rights. The Declaration has been placed online at:
www.southlahealthandhumanrights.org/declaration.html.
Over 1,500 people from around the world have contributed to and/or signed the Declaration to date.

The L.A. CAFA Collaborative’s focus on developing place-based, results-oriented approaches to local health and human rights challenges are exemplified in two subsequent activities. First, members of the L.A. CAFA Collaborative, with support from funders, launched the Healthy Homes Healthy Kids program. Through this program, health care providers at St. John’s Well Child and Family Centers are able to screen for substandard-housing conditions, document their health impacts, and link them to home assessments, health education and remediation services by promotoras at Esperanza Community Housing Corporation and tenant rights education and advocacy by organizers at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy. By December 2010 this program will have impacted over 4,000 children whose health was threatened by substandard housing.

The second activity is L.A. CAFA Collaborative’s development of a shared online database to facilitate communication, case management, referrals, and advocacy among collaborative partners. This database will allow health care providers, community organizers, and promotoras a chance to more effectively advocate on behalf of and coordinate critical services to low-income residents of South Los Angeles.

The L.A. CAFA Collaborative continues to advance current conversations regarding the connection between slum housing conditions and a number of chronic and acute health conditions impacting children and families in South Los Angeles with the publication of the Shame of the City “position paper” (Slum Housing and the Critical Threat to the Health of L.A. Children and Families, published in April 2007). In October 2008, we released another seminal report, Taming the Perfect Storm, which discussed the health and housing crisis, with particular emphasis on the growing numbers of homeless South L.A. residents. A third report chronicling the health and housing impacts of criminalizing slumlords will be released in April 2010.

The health outcomes of those in South L.A. reflect the underlying epidemic in the social determinants of poor health including food insecurity, slum housing, child and family poverty, job insecurity, uncoordinated health services, and rising rents, evictions and foreclosures.  The recent closure of a majority of the public and private hospitals serving South Los Angeles has compounded a preexisting scarcity of comprehensive, affordable health care and contributed to a perform storm of poor health and chronic human rights violations in South L.A.. While local coalitions, community clinics, hospitals, advocacy groups and nonprofits have pieced together a safety net to address these chronic health inequities, the situation is worsening and requires a systemic and coordinated approach.

The Los Angeles CAFA Collaborative with sponsors such as The California Endowment is seizing an unprecedented opportunity to advance a systematic and coordinated approach to further the health and human rights movement in South Los Angeles and beyond.

For more information about the L.A. CAFA Collaborative please contact:

Jim Mangia
President & CEO, St. John’s Well Child & Family Center
jimmangia@wellchild.org