Asian Pacific Health Care Venture and Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center Community Medicine Fellowship Program partner to raise awareness of breast and cervical cancer
October 17, 2011
In 1987, a group of concerned health and human services providers came together to address the lack of available health care programs in the Asian community by creating the Asian Pacific Health Care Venture, Inc. (APHCV). APHCV’s unique approach to health care is what has allowed it to thrive and grow; ensuring the availability of health care to Los Angeles County’s underserved.
On October 21, 2011, at 10:00 am, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, the APHCV is hosting a breast and cervical cancer workshop (Los Feliz Health Center, 1530 Hillhurst Avenue, Los Angeles 90027) to provide information and empower Korean women to learn more about available screenings and how to access care.
Dr. Joo-Yon Julia Youn, Community Medicine Fellow at the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, will answer questions from attendees regarding breast and cervical cancer and will provide information on the importance of regular self examinations for breast cancer and where to access regular screenings such as clinical breast exams, mammography and Pap test. This is an important opportunity to educate the Korean community as breast cancer is the most commonly occurring cancer in Korean American women. Dr. Youn will conduct the workshop in Korean.
Dr. Youn is Board Certified in Family Medicine and received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco Medical School, with a number of years of experience in the nonprofit sector working as a community organizer at the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA).
APHCV is partnering with the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center’s Community Medicine Fellowship Program to provide health care services to the communities it serves. Kaiser Permanente Southern California offers six Community Medicine Fellowship/Junior Faculty positions to graduates of Family Medicine, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics Residency Programs. These positions are held at the Fontana, Los Angeles, Orange County and Woodland Hills Medical Centers, and allow fellowship participants the unique opportunity for self-directed growth and exploration.
Fellows like Dr. Youn participate in one-year, full-time projects which include working in community involvement, peer development, teaching residents and medical students by participating on the resident faculty committee, or working on research projects. As part of her fellowship, Dr. Youn is helping APHCV enhance its impact within the local Korean community, improving outreach efforts and access to health care services for monolingual Koreans. Every Wednesday evening, APHCV offers extended patient care hours at the Los Feliz Health Center, to accommodate working individuals. Dr. Youn has helped develop a Korean focused clinic on the second and fourth Wednesday evenings, providing culturally competent and linguistically sensitive health care for Korean-speaking patients.
According to Dr. Youn, raising awareness about the importance of regular screening and early intervention is critical for effective treatment of breast and cervical cancer. Korean American women have consistently reported relatively low rates of breast and cervical cancer screening, which indicates that the population may be at relatively high risk for cancer mortality and morbidity because of delayed diagnosis. Studies have reported that only 22%–75% of Korean American women had ever had a Papanicolaou (Pap) test (Juon, Choi, & Kim, 2000; Juon et. al., 2003; Kim et al., 1999; Moskavitz et al., 2004; Sarna et. al., 2001; Wismer et al., 1998b), much lower than the national screening rate of 94% of women aged 18 years of age and older (Coughlin et al., 2004). Regarding breast cancer screening, 48%–78% of Korean American women reported ever having a mammogram and 34%–61% were estimated to have had a mammogram in the prior two years (Juon et al., 2000; Juon et. al., 2004; Lee et. al., 2006; Moskavitz et al., 2004; Wismer et al., 1998a). The rates are far lower than those from the 1999 BRFSS, which revealed that 87% of women in the United States aged 40 years and older had ever had a mammogram and 75% of the women had had a mammogram in the prior two years (Coughlin et al., 2004).
In Los Angeles County, the breast cancer rate for Korean American women almost doubled from 1988 (26.1 per 100,000) to 1997 (44.5 per 100,000) compared to a 1%–2% increase in the rates for non-Hispanic white and Hispanic women and a marginal decrease in the rate for African American women during the same period (Deapen, Liu, Perkins, Bernstein, & Ross, 2002). Likewise, the age-adjusted cervical cancer incident rate among Korean America women (15.2 per 100,000) is more than double that of non-Hispanic white women in the United States (7.5 per 100,000), and their incidence rate also is higher than the average rate for all Asian American women (11.8 per 100,000) (Miller et al., 1996).
APHCV’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Workshop will provide important information to Korean American women about breast and cervical cancer and how to access care and treatment. For more information please contact Mee Joo Jung at (323) 644-3880 ext. 404. Parking: $3 at APHCV parking lot or street parking in surrounding neighborhood.
For those who are without health insurance, APHCV staff provides assistance to patients helping screen and enroll them into public health programs, such as Healthy Way LA, that greatly reduces or completely covers the cost of their medical visit. Community members who are interested are encouraged to call APHCV at (323) 644-3888 to make an appointment and get more information on their enrollment eligibility. Preventive care is critical and can save lives.
For over 24 years, APHCV has been providing quality primary and preventive health care services to low-income, monolingual Asians and a growing number of Latinos in Los Angeles County. APHCV has since grown into a multi-clinic organization with three comprehensive health centers in the City of Los Angeles and a fourth expected to be open in the El Monte/Rosemead area early 2012.
Focused on the overall health and wellness of each patient, APHCV provides services throughout the patient lifecycle from prenatal, pediatrics, adolescent health, well women care, adult health care and geriatrics. In addition to its primary care program APHCV has an onsite medication dispensary, laboratory services, integrated behavioral and mental health, nutrition counseling, family planning, physical activity and fitness programs, youth and senior activities, and a variety of health education workshops and programs. On-site linguistic and cultural support is available throughout the patient visit (from appointment setting, registration, medical examination, health education, and follow up) in Spanish and multiple Asian languages - Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, Tagalog, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Indonesian, Bangladeshi, and Japanese - ensuring patients have access to the information they need to lead healthy lives.
Asian Pacific Health Care Venture, Inc. (www.aphcv.org) is a nonprofit federally-qualified health center that provides culturally competent health education and primary care services to over 12,000 patients annually, more than 77% of whom are uninsured. APHCV provides over 46,400 medical and mental health visits each year in multiple Asian languages (Bengali, Cantonese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Indonesian, Mandarin, Tagalog, Thai, Urdu, and Vietnamese), English and Spanish. APHCV operates three community health center sites: the Los Feliz Health Center, Belmont Health Services and John Marshall High School Health Center (for JMHS students). APHCV can be reached at (323) 644-3880. Medical appointments for the Los Feliz Health Center can be made by calling (323) 644-3888 and to the Belmont Health Services at (323) 644-3885.
