November 27, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A new Web site combines a database of health, education, and social-service providers in Los Angeles County with mapping technology to help people find the services they need and to make it easier for policy makers and activists to understand the local social-service landscape.
HealthyCity.org offers information about the location, hours, and types of services available at more than 18,000 charities and government agencies in Los Angeles County.
John Kim, director of the Healthy City Project, says that having all that information in one place will help charities provide more holistic assistance to their clients.
“When you talk to any service provider, they’ll tell you that a five-minute conversation with a client will uncover five or six different critical issues that the family is facing,” says Mr. Kim. “They may come in for health care, but really you find out that their housing is an issue, or some members of the family may need some substance-abuse services or transportation services.”
Case managers can use the new site to find charities that provide needed services in their client’s neighborhood — and even print out a map and directions.
While a charity worker will most often use the software to zoom in on services within a particular neighborhood, policy makers and activists can map the services available in larger areas to see how well programs are distributed across the city and county. In addition, they can include on their maps data from the 2000 census on age, race, median household income, education levels, languages spoken at home, and other variables.
One of the starkest maps that can be generated on the site, says Mr. Kim, is that of South Los Angeles. The map shows a concentration of neighborhoods with people who have low incomes and little education, and a paucity of health, education, and social-service programs, which are largely located in other parts of the city.
Mr. Kim says that a community organizer could use those data to mobilize a neighborhood effort to get a new health-care clinic or a nonprofit organization could include the map in a grant proposal as evidence of the need for a proposed program.
The Healthy City Partnership, which created the site, comprises the Advancement Project (a civil-rights organization with offices in Washington and Los Angeles), the Center for Nonprofit Management, Info Line of Los Angeles, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, and the Advanced Policy Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles.
To get there: Go to http://www.healthycity.org.
