The community primarily served by our program is the Metropolitan East Los Angeles, and incorporated area of Los Angeles County.  The total population for the area is 68.686.  Of this number 96.3% are defined as Latino.  Forty-six percent are foreign born.  The median age of the population is 26.8.  The population of the area is therefore relatively young.  Educational deficits are apparent with only 36.1 of the population reporting high school graduation or higher.

Fifty-one percent of the men and women are in the labor force and constitute an important source of work in the services sector.  Almost 4% of the population has service in the US military.

In spite of the community’s strengths, twenty seven percent of individuals and 24.6% of the families have an income below poverty level.

The proportion of household population is 99.6% suggesting some stability in the availability of housing.  Fifty-one percent of the households have children less than 18 years of age.

East Los Angeles is therefore a working class community with a relatively high proportion of young people.  Criminality indices are relatively high.  Narcotics violation is high with 1216 arrests reported in 2005.  Crimes of violence follow with 388 persons charged with aggravated assault and 14 criminal homicides during the same period of time.  Property crimes are less common with 208 burglary and 100 vandalism arrests.

We are therefore serving a community with an over representation of young persons and high proportion of Spanish speaking immigrants. The proportion of persons with educational deficits is large as well as the proportion of those who use narcotics and of those who tend to resort to physical violence in their social interactions.

Given the above, the persons who apply for services from the program require careful needs assessment and planning to adequately address their needs. In addition to issues mentioned, use of contaminated intravenous needle injections, unprotected sex and poor nutrition have associated risk of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B and C, logenic abscesses, TB, and sexually transmitted diseases. Furthermore, poor nutritional habits lead to a high prevalence of obesity, hypertension and diabetes.

Although treatment of several of the conditions mentioned can not be done in our clinic, adequate health screening and referral, health education and encouragement to have patients learn about their health problems and the medications they are prescribed become and important responsibilities for our staff.

Also important is the provide care to a high proportion of patients who give history of physical and sexual abuse and currently exposed to spousal or child violence and abuse.

Many of our patients have psychiatric comorbidities that need to be treated. Social problems need to be addressed. Common problems include patient with disabilities in need of vocational rehabilitation, individuals involved with the criminal justice system such as those on parole or probation, immigration status difficulties and pervasive poverty.