Jennifer Whitney discusses the founding of LHOP in her article in Real Change News.

Latino Health Outreach Project
Ofrecemos servicos de salud y consejos medicos en español
Jueves: Avenida de Martin Luther King Jr y Avenida de Claiborne 7 a 9 por la manana
(504) 377-7281

Latino Health Outreach Project
About three weeks after the levees broke, a few women from Louisiana who were volunteering at the Common Ground Health Clinic began scouting areas of New Orleans in order to assess healthcare needs on the ground. We quickly realized that among the many gaps in the city’s public healthcare infrastructure was a source of culturally competent, bilingual healthcare for Latino residents and cleanup workers. We began setting up clinics on sidewalks and parking lots in front of hotels where large numbers of workers were staying. Initially, the clinics consisted of two healthcare providers giving tetanus shots and over-the-counter medications. Within a few weeks, more providers were added, including MDs, nurse practitioners, acupuncturists, and herbalists. At different times we have operated as many as three mobile clinics a week, and have provided support for health and safety trainings with other organizations. We now do one clinic a week early morning at a day-labor pick up site, one at a monthly Day Laborer Congress organized through the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, as well as occasional clinics at other sites. In addition to providing health care, we are building relationships with organizations who have a history of working in New Orleans’ Latino community.

            As of April, 2007, we operate one clinic per week. It is Thursday mornings from 7:00– 9:00 am at a day labor corner at Martin Luther King Avenue and South Claiborne. Our clinical services include basic primary care, vaccinations, first aid and wound care, herbal medicine, health education, and distribution of personal protective equipment along with trainings on how to properly use such equipment (such as respirators, coveralls, and the like). We also put on a clinic at the monthly Day Laborer Congress hosted by the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, where we offer our usual services plus an educational forum on the potential health hazards inherent to the most common types of work available to day laborers in New Orleans. We are continuing to develop a broad referral network, and when necessary, we accompany our patients to other medical facilities, where we advocate and interpret for our patients.

            Currently LHOP is coordinated by two long-term volunteers (including a co-founder of the organization), both of whom are fluent Spanish speakers. We also have about six regular volunteers who work with us a few hours a week, and then a constantly rotating group of very short-term volunteers. In any given week, we hold at least one clinic for day laborers and scout different areas of the city to make connections with day laborers and workers living in hotels or trailer encampments. We also have weekly meetings where we refine clinic protocols, orient new providers and other volunteers, coordinate a medical Spanish study group, and continue developing our long-term strategy and vision.

            In order to maintain cultural competency, we prioritize volunteers who either identify as Latino and/or speak Spanish fluently. However, although our herbalists don’t fall into either category, we always ensure that they have dedicated interpreters working with them, as many of our patients are already familiar with and prefer to use herbal medicine. We have high standards for our interpreters, as we recognize that a language barrier creates a barrier to health care, and that without fluency, we are unable to provide the highest level of care. For this reason, our orientation packet deals extensively with issues of interpreting and language barriers. We have begun a collaboration with a group of bilingual Tulane medical students and Masters of Public Health students who volunteer with us a few hours a week and are running their own medical Spanish study group, which they have opened to our other volunteers. We have also recently developed a partnership with Tulane University’s Clinic at Covenant House, where we provide interpreters two afternoons a week in order to faciltate their seeing patients we refer from our outreach clinics.

            When volunteers who identify as Latino want to participate in the project, even if they do not have medical skills, we welcome them to do intake and other non-medical tasks, and we are committed to teaching all volunteers basic skills, such as taking vital signs. We are an active member of the Hispanic Forum – a network of organizations advocating for and providing services to the region’s Latino community. We are working in collaboration with the Department of Public Health to help facilitate HIV/AIDS testing and counseling, and we have an ongoing partnership with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network through which we are able to provide personal protective equipment to workers, as well as education about proper use and maintentance of said equipment. Additionally, we are working with the Hispanic Apostolate, the Monte de los Olivos Lutheran Church, the Israelite Baptist Church, and the Latino Health Access Network, which has enabled us to expand our services, share resources, and collaborate effectively.

            Future Vision
There are two main projects we seek to develop and expand: our advocacy program and our interpreter development program. One of the greatest needs we have seen through our work is to advocate for patients who need specialty or follow up care. We have advocated for between 20-30 patients in the 18 months of our existence, including six women’s prenatal care, three of whose births we’ve attended thus far.

            Through this work – difficult in any situation, but particularly complex given the absolute and total destruction of all public health care in the city – we have learned to navigate many convoluted bureaucracies, and are now making maps and flow charts to assist other volunteers as well as organizations doing related work. We have come to a point where we the biggest obstacle to increasing our capacity to advocate for more patients is staffing – we simply are unable to take on any more administrative work. So, we are currently seeking funding for ourselves (as we’ve been volunteering between 20-40 hours a week for the last 18 months) and for a volunteer coordinator who will match patients to advocates, schedule appointments, handle grievances, track patients, and assist volunteers with documentation.

            On the interpreting front, we will be hosting a medical interpreting training in September put on by Mijoba Communications, for which we aim to offer slots to bilingual staff at community clinics as well as at hospitals and other medical institutions. We are beginning this process with a long-term vision of developing a base of local interpreting trainers, so as to establish a standard of medical interpreting (currently non-existent – New Orleans’ health care facilities have neither a standard, nor interpreters, with few exceptions), begin to demand that hospitals comply with federal law requiring the availability of interpreters, and to increase our organizational capacity, as well as that of the region, to assist the Low English Proficient population in receiving appropriate and quality health care.

            We look forward to deepening our collaboration with the Clinic at Covenant House through sharing volunteer interpreters, thereby increasing their capacity to see Latino patients, and in the interim before the September training, we will be providing basic interpreting skills training to their two bilingual staff members. Additionally, we hope to provide volunteer interpreters to a pre-Katrina ambulatory care clinic, the St. Thomas Clinic in the Irish Channel neighborhood uptown, as well as two new clinics in the city: the New Orleans Women’s Clinic, scheduled to open in the Treme this month, and the Lower Ninth Ward Clinic.

For more information, please contact us at lhopnola@gmail.com.

Please read about LHOP in the news at The Indypendent

Here's another article about LHOP: Clinic Reaches Out to Latino Population