The effects of the economic stimulus package, aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), approved by Congress in February, continues to spread across the country. In Los Angeles, the Asian Pacific Health Care Venture (APHCV) just announced that it's received another $683,965 as part of the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) initiative. The CIP initiative allows health centers to address capital improvement needs such as construction, repair, renovation, and equipment purchases, including health information technology systems.

Previously, the organization had announced another $1,300,000 from the ARRA to establish a New Access Point clinic:

As part of President Obama’s commitment to increasing access to health care services for the uninsured and underserved, NAP funds will be used to establish new community clinic sites providing primary and preventive health care.

APHCV is one of 126 community health centers, nationwide, selected through a competitive grant application process to receive this funding as part of the ARRA. This funding will create access to health care services for over 3,000 low income and uninsured individuals and create over a dozen new jobs. APHCV will expand upon its mission to provide culturally competent and linguistically sensitive health care services focusing on the Asian and Latino populations within our community. Currently, APHCV serves over 12,400 patients annually, in twelve Asian languages, in addition to English and Spanish. APHCV is currently working with its community partners to identify facilities to expand its health care services and looks forward for the opportunity to provide care to the community.

They also received another $355,692 as part of the Increase in Demand for Service Initiative. That initiative allows health centers to expand health-care services and create jobs for those most impacted by the recession.

APHCV has seen the effects of the recession firsthand, as the number of families seeking enrollment assistance in December 2008 for public health programs such as Medi-Cal increased 39 percent from last year. From July to December 2008, APHCV saw a 62 percent increase in the number of families seeking food stamps from the previous half of the year.

APHCV will use the funds over the next two years to address this increase in demand for services by hiring outreach staff for the Chinese and Vietnamese communities, clinical providers and support staff. The increase in staff will provide additional services to an average of 200 clients per month, or 4,800 over the entire project period. Access to care will be expanded to an additional 600 new patients, 524 of whom are uninsured.

As a community-based organization that provides health education and primary care services to 12,400 patients annually, of which more than 77 percent are uninsured, APHCV is vital to the health of our community, in particular immigrants. (APHCV provided 46,400 medical and mental-health visits last year in multiple Asian languages (Bengali, Cantonese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Indonesian, Mandarin, Tagalog, Thai, Urdu and Vietnamese), English and Spanish.) So glad to see the stimulus going directly to the community.