Wellness Project Addresses Health Needs of Native Americans
 roblems of
poverty, substandard housing and a lack of culturally appropriate health services persist
among the 80,000 Native Americans in Orange and Los Angeles counties. Their history and
traditions, however, often keep this population from going outside their communities for
help. The result is inattention to health problems endemic to low-income Native Americans.
“American Indians in L.A. and Orange counties represent the largest urban Indian
population in the United States,” said Kathleen Bridgeland, coordinator of Southern
California Indian Center's (SCIC’s) Wellness Project. “But they’re often
overlooked by social service agencies even though the community has high incidences of
asthma, diabetes, heart disease, infant mortality, alcoholism, drug addiction and fetal
alcohol syndrome.”
   The SCIC is addressing the needs of the Native American population
through its American Indian Wellness Project, which received a two-year, $100,000 grant
from TCWF. The objectives of SCIC’s Wellness Project are to evaluate the health care
needs of 150 Native American families; provide health screenings, information and
referrals to 300 children and their families; and expand access to education in areas such
as parenting skills, nutrition and child safety.
The approach of SCIC caseworkers is to establish supportive relationships with Native
American families by visiting them in their homes. Using TCWF funding, SCIC recently added
a much-needed intake coordinator.
“Having a master’s-level social worker in the office every day, handling
intake calls and assigning cases, helps all our counselors,” Bridgeland said.
“Our intake coordinator, Christine Kamatani, has been with the agency for two years.
She knows our programs and the staff, so she knows who can best handle each case.”
The intake coordinator also helps connect the caseworkers to resources and information
they might need on the job. “As a result of the grant, everyone on our staff feels
more comfortable looking at health issues with clients. They know they can go to Christine
to get the information they need to educate and support client families,” Bridgeland
said.
 Kamatani assigns new cases carefully.
“Most of our clients have multiple problems and need intensive support, so we often
assign more than one counselor or caseworker to each family,” Kamatani said. “
Since we have a number of Indian workers on staff, we include a Native American on as many
case teams as we can to help our clients overcome any suspicion of public agencies they
may have,” she said.
“There aren’t a lot of agencies that understand the complexity of Native
American health issues and social service needs,” said Fatima Angeles, TCWF program
officer. “Since so many of SCIC’s caseworkers are Native Americans, they can
work intensively with client families and establish a high level of trust. We’re
pleased with the impact our grant is having in this community.”
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