Investigators: Bowen Chung, Michael McCreary, Loretta Jones, Felicia Jones, James Gilmore, Elizabeth Dixon, Kenneth Wells, Susan Ettner and Michael Ong
Community Partners: Healthy African American Families II, QueensCare Health and Faith Partnership
This project will determine the cost of low- and high-intensity interventions for depression. The project will also compare the costs of the interventions and determine whether they save money for the health system or society in general, since people who recover from chronic depression may require less public support because they will need to see a doctor less and will be able to work more. The low-intensity approach is called Resources for Services. Under this approach, we give providers and agencies technical assistance on how to (1) screen for depression, and (2) educate patients around depression and their treatment options, which include cognitive behavioral therapy and medication. We also train providers and agencies to deliver these treatments. The high-intensity approach is called Community Engagement and Planning, which calls for adapting depression-care materials to agency networks and providing intensive, in-person trainings, conferences and site visits.
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Investigator: Martin Shapiro
Community Partners: Healthy African American Families and St. John's Well Child and Family Centers
In this project, we will study a community-based intervention to improve blood pressure control among low-income adults. We will randomly divide participants into two groups: One group of volunteers will receive a home blood pressure monitor and payments for submitting to monthly blood pressure checks. Volunteers in the second group will receive a blood pressure monitor and a financial incentive for (1) using the monitor, (2) lowering their blood pressure, and (3) recording whether they have taken their medicine. The second group also receives an intervention that helps them identify things that are important in their lives and their reasons for staying healthy.
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Investigators: Arleen Brown, Katherine Kahn and Roberto Vargas
Community Partners: Healthy African American Families, Los Angeles Urban League
The Healthy Community Neighborhood Initiative (formerly the 70-block Project) will identify and address key health-related questions posed by the residents of park Mesa Heights, a low-income community in South Los Angeles characterized by some of the poorest health outcomes in Los Angeles County. The purpose of the project is to improve health and health care through interventions that address housing, employment, education, and safety through three data collection activities: (1) a household survey characterizing the community's health care, outcomes and health risks, (2) documentation of physical and social characteristics of the community, and (3) community mapping of assets and resources from with the community can draw.
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Investigators: Alex Ortega, Michael Prelip and Deborah Glik
Community Partner: Volunteers of East Los Angeles (VELA)
This project provides technical assistance and training on survey methods, human subjects and research ethics, survey data collection and quality control to community members so they can conduct professional-level interviews of corner store patrons. The Corner Store Grocery Project seeks to improve the availability of healthy foods in East LA and Boyle Heights, Latino communities with large populations of new immigrants and a dearth of supermarkets.
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Investigators: Nina Harawa and Charles Hilliard
Community Partner: Spectrum Community Services and Research
The purpose of this project is to better understand the post-incarceration needs and resources of HIV+ former prisoners. This population has a poor history of remaining in medical care, resulting in increased viral load, morbidity and disease transmission risk. We have analyzed records of 363 Spectrum case management clients, developed a focus group discussion interview guide and recruitment tools, and received IRB approval to conduct focus groups.
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Investigators: Moira Inkelas, Lila Guirguis, Alex Morales and Patricia Bowie
Community Partner: Magnolia Place Initiative
The Magnolia Place Initiative is a collaboration of faith-based and community groups within a 500-block portion of Los Angeles that crosses Pico Union, West Adams and the North Figueroa Corridor, west of downtown. This project used smartphones to help a group of Magnolia Place residents record images and information from their neighborhoods in ways that may contribute to meaningful change while building community capacity for research. We developed a "Holiday Campaign" around Halloween, which involved taking snapshots and mapping the observations, and created a rating scale for measuring holiday spirit. We also wrote a Spanish-language guide for the project.
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Investigators: David Zingmond, Jerry Kominski and Ami M. Shah
Using a variety of public data sources, we calculated the disease burden of six major clinical areas—heart disease, diabetes, pulmonary disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS and mental health—for the eight service planning areas and 26 health districts within Los Angeles County. The purpose of the project is to quantify disease "hot spots" within Los Angeles County and share our results with community stakeholders, policy makers and researchers so the data may be used to shape the design and implementation of community-driven initiatives.
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Investigators: Moira Inkelas, Terry Silberman, Mary Wang and Shannon Whaley
Community Partner: Los Angeles County Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition programs
Los Angeles County Women, Infants and Children (LAC WIC) programs provide supplemental nutrition, health care referrals and nutrition education for low-income pregnant women or women with children under age 5 who are at nutritional risk. Although LAC WIC programs are often approached with research requests, they do not have a strategic plan to vet, manage or optimize in-house research. This project will create a strategic plan that will provide guidelines and tools to facilitate research of interest to LAC WIC leaders, participants, staff and academics.
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Investigators: Geraldo Moreno, Carol Mangione, Mignon Moore, Laura Trejo, Ivy Lee, Carmen Reyes and Catherine Sarkisian
Community Partners: Los Angeles Community Academic Partnership for Research on Aging and Los Angeles City Department on Aging
This study will examine the barriers that prevent minority elders from participating in research, particularly those studies that involve collection of biomarkers. Minority elders face health disparities but are underrepresented in research. As a consequence, research results are potentially non-generalizable to older, minority adults.
Investigators: Marie Mayan-Cho, Miriam Hernandez and Laurie Shaker-Irwin
Community Partners: Providence Access to Care/Health Education Outreach and Providence Latino Health Promoter Program
This study will develop a toolkit to assist investigators with employing and utilizing the skills of community health workers, or promotoras, to encourage participation of underserved ethnic and minority populations in research.
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Investigators: Lark Galloway-Gilliam, Annie Park, Jessica Jew, Ami M. Shah, Nina Vaccaro and Roberto Vargas
Community Partners: Community Health Councils and South Coalition of Community Health Centers
This study aims to improve access to quality care and reduce poor health outcomes associated with cardiovascular disease generally and congestive heart failure in particular. The study will review public health data and conduct statistical analyses to understand factors related to excess hospitalization and death from heart disease in South Los Angeles. The findings will be used to inform prevention, early detection and treatment interventions.
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Investigators: Beth Glenn, Hector Rodriguez and Roshan Bastani
Community Partners: Building Clinic Capacity for Quality, a program of Community Partners
This project will develop an electronic prototype for collecting information from patients about health behaviors, including physical activity, stress, anxiety, depression and tobacco use. The study will involved four safety-net clinics to address the infrequent and inconsistent assessment of behavioral risk factors in primary care.
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Investigators: Barbara Vickery, Eric Cheng, William Cunningham, Susan Ettner, Honglu Liu, Brian Mittman, Amytis Towfighi, Lillie Hudson, Nerses Sanossian, Tom Anderson, Robert Bryg, Jeff Guterman and Sandra Gross-Schulman
Community Partners: Healthy African American Families II, Partners in Care Foundation and Watts Labor Community Action Committee
This study, which is also funded by the American Heart Association, will assess whether lifestyle group clinics, care managers and support from community health workers may reduce the risk of a second stroke in socioeconomically disadvantaged minority patients.
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Investigators: Bowen Chung, Jeanne Miranda
Community Partners: Healthy African American Families II, Health Services and Society, First African Presbyterian Church, California Community Foundation
This project, Building Resiliency and Increasing Community Hope (B-RICH) proposes to pilot and then
conduct a randomized, single blind trial of a psychosocial intervention called a “Resiliency Class” (RC), to provide depression education and health promotion to individuals with depressive symptoms, by training non- professionals to offer this class to clients receiving services within diverse community settings (e.g. health care clinic, church, community advocacy organization, social services agency). This class is not designed to be therapy, but rather is designed as a class that is informed on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles used to address depressive symptoms, on how to improve mood, and to enhance resiliency in the face of stress.
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