COUNTYWIDE : Health Project Is Given $40,000 Grant

California Health Decisions, a nonprofit consumer education project based in Orange, has received a $40,000 grant from the UniHealth Corp. of Burbank to expand its programs into Los Angeles County, executive director Ellen Severoni said.

In addition to the grant, UniHealth has agreed to provide office space and telephones for her organization at its hospitals in Santa Monica, Long Beach, Northridge and downtown Los Angeles, Severoni said. And “we don’t anticipate these being the only sites” in Los Angeles County, she added. “This is just to get started.”

In addition, Severoni said, UniHealth is supporting a three-year effort in which California Health Decisions will hold a series of “town hall meetings” asking Los Angeles County residents to identify basic health needs. That project will get under way in July.

About 30,000 Californians will participate in these forums, Severoni predicts. And at the end, she said, the views of “ordinary people” about health care will be given not only to legislators but also to physicians and hospital administrators--”those people who make health decisions with very little input from the public.”

Severoni said the support she is receiving from UniHealth is similar to the commitment her organization has received from St. Joseph Health System in Orange, which for three years has provided office space and telephones.

In the five years since it began, California Health Decisions participated in a coalition that successfully lobbied Orange County to provide more prenatal care. It has conducted frequent workshops on the durable power of attorney for health care, a legally binding document that ensures a patient’s wishes for treatment will be followed even if he is no longer capable of deciding himself.

And it conducted a series of meetings in which 5,000 Orange County residents voiced concerns about their right to health care, regardless of income.

California Health Decisions is modeled after a pioneering program conducted in Oregon in 1983 and 1984 and Severoni, a registered nurse, has been its project director and leader since its inception.