Spreading Out a Health-Care Safety Net

Nearly blind in one eye because of diabetes, Miguel Angel de la Vega approached one Orange County hospital after another seeking help.

De la Vega, 42, an uninsured construction worker, was prepared to pay thousands of dollars for laser surgery to restore his sight. All he asked was that he be allowed to pay in installments. He was rejected at every turn, he said.

Then, in Santa Ana, de la Vega met Raquel Olamendi, an assistant to the Mexican consulate, who coordinates a weeklong health fair in the city.

That’s how de la Vega learned of a low-profile network of medical professionals and volunteers sympathetic to the difficulties encountered by the county’s low-income residents in finding medical care.

Olamendi sent de la Vega to a community-based organization called Latino Health Access. After attending its classes on diabetes, he took steps that led to slight vision improvement. From there, he was referred to a doctor who offered him corrective laser surgery for half the cost, and allowed him to pay over time.

De la Vega said he learned “there are places to get help in the community, but we just didn’t know where they were.”

The informal network of health providers, which assists uninsured immigrants, was created two years ago when Olamendi helped organize Orange County’s participation in Binational Health Week.

This year’s events began Friday with a 25-hour “tooth-a-thon,” offering free tooth extractions, and continues through Oct. 18. Health screenings at the Mexican consulate’s office in Santa Ana, cancer-detection clinics and obesity and nutrition-awareness workshops are also being offered.

The events are conducted by volunteers with help from Mexican and California government agencies and community health clinics. The purpose is to improve the health of immigrants, who often lack insurance and don’t know where to turn for health services.

Similar events are being held in 25 other California counties, 16 states and in Mexico, where Mexican President Vicente Fox is scheduled to kick off Binational Health Week in his home state of Guanajuato on Oct. 11.

The health campaign, created in 2001, is sponsored by the California-Mexico Health Initiative of the University of California.

Two years ago, Health Week organizers asked Olamendi to coordinate the events in Orange County. The local Binational Health Week events attracted 3,000 people, Olamendi said. Last year, organizers representing about 50 nonprofit health-related organizations helped about 11,000 people get doctor referrals and donated services such as diabetes and cholesterol screenings.

This year’s activities are expected to draw about 20,000 people.

Orange County’s health providers promise to continue their efforts year-round. About 30 people, including Mexican consular employees and health educators, meet monthly to coordinate efforts.

Olamendi estimated 200 people this year have been helped through the network.

Among the volunteers is Sandra Guerra, a health educator at Community Care Health Centers in Huntington Beach.

“We are referring individuals back and forth. There is such a need and so we try to see who can do what,” said Guerra, whose clinic workers volunteer at Binational Health Week and sponsor an information session on addiction and domestic violence.

While each county offers similar activities, the Orange County effort has been unusual because there seems to be less community interest in helping immigrants, said Xochitl Castaneda, director of the California-Mexico Health Initiative.

“Orange County is not an easy county to work on immigrant issues. L.A. is more fertile grounds. There is a larger population,” Castaneda said.

The network that Olamendi and others established “is the ripple effect” of Binational Health Week, she said, with providers also benefiting from the events.

“We see people who didn’t have the opportunity to meet their partners or their peers,” she said. “Through Binational Health Week, they are contacting each other.”