UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity

UCLA KAISER PERMANENTE C E N T E R F O R H E A LT H E Q U I T Y

WE CREATE LASTING PARTNERSHIPS THAT LEVERAGE COMMUNITY ASSETS TO IMPROVE HEALTH.

W H O W E AR E Our community-partnered approach is based on the belief that a healthy society equally values the wellbeing of all its members.

Since its establishment in 2004, the UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity has collaborated with a broad range of community partners to design, implement, evaluate, and disseminate programs that address the most pressing health inequities in our communities. Regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, income, education, sexual identity, or disability status, everyone deserves an equal opportunity to thrive.

W H AT W E D O We conduct rigorous social science research to design the most effective and efficient programs to tackle health inequities.

Our programs reach people where they live, learn, work, play, and seek health care. We work closely with key community agencies — from inner-city community clinics to schools and churches — as equal partners in our shared vision of health equity. Our center is not content to research and identify health inequities and we don’t parachute into communities to deliver top-down public health interventions. We build lasting cross-sector partnerships that empower communities to fundamentally reshape policies and environments to produce systemic changes that can dramatically improve health outcomes.

H OW W E D O IT Our work seamlessly combines rigorous scientific methods with deep local knowledge of key community stakeholders — a truly innovative approach.

We identify community assets that are often overlooked. A Korean church isn’t simply a place where people go for an hour every Sunday. For many, it’s the centerpiece of the community and a place to connect with critical resources. If you want to impact high rates of Hepatitis B, liver cancer, and obesity in the Los Angeles Korean community, you don’t take to the streets of Koreatown.

You go to church. Our center succeeds because it meets people where they are. Our programs build community ownership and buy-in to produce lasting change. With the help of science, these vibrant partnerships allow communities to invest wisely in effective programs with real impact.

O U R I MPAC T The UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity collaborates with community organizations to implement sustainable policy and environmental change to achieve the greatest possible collective impact.

We work with over 300 community organizations including schools, health and social service agencies, faith-based organizations, nonprofits, and worksites. Together we conduct projects to increase cancer screening and vaccination, reduce smoking and exposure to environmental pollutants, and increase healthy eating and physical activity to prevent and control chronic disease in the most affected communities. Our approaches and partnerships are as diverse as our city.

With obesity for instance, what works is a fundamental redesign of an environment so that the healthy choice is the default choice and people must go out of their way to do the less healthy thing.

That’s how lasting, systems-level change is created to improve health in communities. We designed and tested innovative approaches with community organizations in urban centers throughout the United States. From schools and worksites, to churches, health clinics and community centers, our project reached over 200,000 vulnerable residents. Many of these community partners have now scaled up these projects and each has become a model for other communities struggling with chronic rates of obesity.

Learn more at: healthequity.ucla.edu

healthequity.ucla.edu