Study explores health care gap in South LA

Public health advocates in South Los Angeles say their neighborhoods don't get their fair share of health care dollars. KPCC's Patricia Nazario says they've compiled the Health Equity Scorecard to prove it.

Patricia Nazario: The study comes from South L.A.'s nonprofit Community Health Councils. Denise Fairchild was part of the panel that outlined the study's results. She chairs the Community and Economic Development Department at L.A. Trade Tech College.

Fairchild says South L.A. should be important to everyone, because what happens south of the 10 Freeway doesn't stay there.

Denise Fairchild: All right? If we have unemployment in our communities, guess what? We're coming to rob you.

Nazario: The study's researchers evaluated four-dozen socioeconomic and environmental markers that they say influence health behavior and outcomes.

Among the markers is the number of liquor stores in South L.A. The report's primary author – Lark Galloway-Gilliam – says South L.A. has four times more liquor stores per square mile than L.A.'s Westside.

Lark Galloway-Gilliam: Has a lot to do with the failure of leadership.

Nazario: She put her concern directly to new L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.

Galloway-Gilliam: How are you going to break through that? What's going to change in terms of your leadership?

Nazario: The top priority for Ridley-Thomas is reopening the King-Harbor Hospital as a full-service hospital. He says the money's there to get the project moving.

Mark Ridley-Thomas: The seismic work, for an example. Then the resources from the federal government, in terms of those that were taken from the hospital, will need to be restored.

Nazario: Ridley-Thomas is talking about the $200 million in annual funding that federal inspectors revoked after the hospital failed a key review a year-and-a-half ago. He hopes to reopen the medical facility in stages, beginning in a couple of years.

The supervisor took questions from the hundred or so health care professionals and advocates who attended the meeting at Holman United Methodist Church. Ridley-Thomas says he'll keep the Health Equity Scorecard in mind as he works to reopen King-Harbor.