Americas - La Fe Health Policy and Advocacy Center
Keywords: Healthcare access, Patient empowerment, Health policy
La Fe Health Policy and Advocacy Center is a new initiative focused on improving health care access and service delivery for the Mexican American community in Texas and the Southwest. The mission of this organization is to advance the decision making of Mexican Americans as health care consumers, to boost their interest in health care issues that are important to them, and to increase their involvement in health policy and health system change. The center will take on several core activities, such as conducting policy analysis, health leadership and constituency development, as well as consumer health education and advocacy, and legislative education and policy development. Also, in an effort to identify issues of importance to Latinos in the Southwest, it will focus on gathering information through stories shared in platicas(discussions), focus groups, and research.
The center’s strategic objectives include:
conducting health policy analysis and advocacy;
expanding health insurance coverage to all Mexican Americans;
promoting the Mexican American social and cultural experience, linguistic and literacy characteristics, self-reliance, and resilience as strengths that can contribute to improved health and well-being;
demonstrating improved Mexican American health care choices/decision making(access and quality) using culturally competent social and business marketing approaches;
raising awareness of the inequalities in health resources and care, and engaging Mexican American and other supportive networks of social, education,health, business, and faith-based organizations to improve the capacity and quality of health care; and
promoting and developing activist health leadership, at all levels from the grassroots on up, that in turn will contribute to the growth of a constituency that addresses the health policy issues that are important to Latinos.
For more information on La Fe Health Policy and Advocacy Center, please contact Juan Flores, Executive Director, at jflores@lafepolicycenter.org
