At Hope Street Elementary Center, a small preschool that serves infants and toddlers from low-income families in Los Angeles, health professionals have been taught not to be afraid of immunizations and doctor visits.
Several medical residents hosted a “teddy bear clinic” for pre-K and kindergarten students to raise awareness about safety, comfort, health education, and the importance of wellness checkups with a doctor. .
“They come and explain the importance of eating fruits and vegetables, or how to brush your teeth correctly,” he said. “These activities are part of our children’s health education, so that they are prepared from an early age to be successful in life.”
Around the tables where they receive daily academic instruction, at least 20 children used toy stethoscopes and plastic syringes and did their own “health checks” on their eyes, ears, heart and even encouraged themselves to apply themselves ” vaccines”.
“They remind me of my childhood playing firefighter or doctor,” said Fernando Valencia, a family medicine physician at Dignity Health – California Hospital Medical Center (CHMC).
Valencia told La Opinión that his career is due to the fact that he almost lost his mother, Bertha Antanaramian, who had mental health problems.
“She was almost about to take her own life, and the medicine saved her,” reported the doctor, who had great patience with the little ones who played “doctors” for an hour at the hospital’s Mercy Housing facility.
In addition, the doctors taught the children not to be afraid when they go with their parents to visit the doctor, each of them baptized their teddy bears with the names they chose, which they “vaccinated” with a plastic syringe.
“I’m not afraid of vaccines anymore,” said a Latina girl, who “medically examined” her teddy bear named “Isabel.”
Three decades of service to the community
However, beyond the recreational activity, despite their economic conditions, children receive top-quality care and education at Hope Street Family Center.
“We started as a partnership between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the California Hospital Medical Center, shortly after the civil unrest in Los Angeles,” Vickie Kropenske, who has served as director of Hope Street, told La Opinión. Margolis Family Center, since its creation in 1992.
They did this as a way to address some of the underlying health and equity issues in geographic areas of South Los Angeles.
“Really, that was prevalent at the time and that was what led to that civil unrest,” recalled the Hunter College sociologist and Cornell University nurse. “We looked at what were some of the basic needs in the community, particularly for young families and children.”
Hope Street Margolis Family Center
Just over three decades later, approximately 150,000 children and families have been served by the Hope Street program, which continues its record of empowering and strengthening families by addressing the social determinants of health through continuum of care that includes : early childhood education, child welfare, behavioral health, parenting education, English as a Second Language (ESL) literacy, health, and social services that support families from birth to adulthood.
“Our focus has been on the total needs of the family and the children, and we address them in a comprehensive and integrated manner,” Kropenske said. They also provide services to pregnant women, have summer programs for youth, and a mental health clinic for children and parents.
Excited doctors with children
“Sharing moments with children is always nice and we want to be their inspiration for when they grow up,” said Widad Shalabi, Family Medicine Resident at California Hospital Medical Center.
She and her professional partner, Jaime Silva, were excited to play with the doctors of the future.
“I hope these children study hard and then they are the ones who take care of our health,” said Silva, who came to the world of medicine from the Pico-Union neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles.
The work at Dignity Health-California Medical Center and Hope Street Elementary Center also includes social workers, nurses and teachers, that is, a multidisciplinary team that focuses not only on physical health, but really on the emotional environment. full of families and their children.
“We are called to serve the community,” said Osman Adam, a Ghanaian-born resident physician who graduated from the University of Arizona medical school. Over the years, Hope Street has become a dynamic resource center serving families living at or below the poverty line, particularly those hard hit during the pandemic.
Help out to the most needy
In fact, 40% of households served by Hope Street earn less than $25,000 per year, 45% of students ages 0-5 live in poverty, and approximately 55% of adults live below the poverty line. poverty never completed high school.
Many of Hope Street’s alumni have become the first college graduates in their families, while others have gone on to careers in health care, medicine, and other cherished fields.
“What the team at Hope Street Margolis Family Center has accomplished over the past 30 years has been extraordinary,” said Alina Moran, CHMC President. “The lives of thousands of children and families have been positively shaped in that span through the passion and dedication of the Hope Street staff, enabling students to achieve far more than they could have dreamed of.”
For his part, Dr. Anthony Zamudio, clinical psychologist and director of Human Behavior at Dignity Health hospital expressed his hope that the Latino children who participated in the teddy bear clinic “will become the new doctors in the community
“We have to go out to the houses, to the streets and to the churches to recruit from an early age the doctors who will replace us in the future”, stressed the health professional.