June* came into the emergency room with a complicated infection in her lungs. It wasn’t her first time. Over and over again, she had cycled in and out of the ICU with dangerously low oxygen levels. Doctors would check in with her after she was discharged, but her health concerns ran deeper—June was overweight and found it difficult to leave her apartment, making it hard for her to make any progress with her lung health.
Dr. Jason Prasso, pulmonologist at MLKCH, knew she was exactly the kind of patient who needed wrap-around support—the kind that went beyond specialty care. Lung disease often comes with additional diagnoses, such as mental health disorders, substance use, heart failure, or diabetes. In many cases, managing these conditions also requires a patient to face down barriers that medical staff aren’t always able to help address: difficulties with transportation to appointments, complicated paperwork, coordination across providers, prescription refills, and so much more.
With support from L.A. Care Health Plan, however, patients like June could enroll in a specialized clinic at MLKCH with a multidisciplinary approach to treating complex lung disease. Pulmonologists, pharmacists, nutritionists, care coordinators, nurses, social workers, and spiritual advisors became part of a patient’s care team, working together.
The concept—and the grant—was initially imagined as a post-COVID discharge clinic, rehabilitating patients whose lungs had been severely impacted by COVID. Patients like Elaine, who had a severe case of COVID that put her in MLKCH’s ICU for more than six weeks. But while support from inhalers to living situations, oxygen to mental health, was critical for Elaine’s COVID recovery, the fact was that this support was needed beyond the pandemic. So L.A. Care and MLKCH partnered to extend the idea, widening the clinic’s scope to treat all patients with complex lung diseases.
June joined the clinic. Her care team recognized that addressing her weight and working to improve her strength would have the greatest effect on her lung health. With a great amount of coordination, Dr. Prasso’s team worked to have her admitted directly into an inpatient rehabilitation center from home. At the center, she has been doing remarkably well, losing over 100 lbs in the first few months, steadily continuing to lose weight, and keeping in touch with her MLKCH team.
“I make the craziest asks,” says Dr. Prasso, describing the creative solutions staff came up with to make sure patients reached the next step in their care, “and somehow our staff has always delivered.”
It’s the extra mile of support and willingness from MLKCH staff to tackle any challenge that has made the difference for so many patients. That, in turn, has been made possible by large, multi-year gifts from partners across Los Angeles. Says Director of Major Gifts, Sharon Padua, “Major philanthropic support from our community partners signal confidence and belief in our work. These investments allow MLKCH to continue to problem-solve, to launch new programs, innovate our processes, and prove, patient by patient, that health is attainable.”
New moms at MLKCH have that same level of deep support, thanks in part to gifts from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. Their gifts helped launch a prenatal care program and expand maternal health services at MLKCH. Medical staff working in the Labor and Delivery department saw that mothers were coming in to deliver their babies with little to no prenatal care. The Emergency Department was treating women for routine pregnancy care. Lisa*, an immigrant who hadn’t been able to access prenatal care in the US, was one of these patients. In the Emergency Department, MLKCH doctors told her she was anemic. Left untreated, anemia can exacerbate complications during birth if the mother loses a great deal of blood. MLKCH staff helped her enroll in health insurance, and she became a patient with regularly scheduled prenatal visits. Doctors prescribed iron supplements and monitored her health throughout her pregnancy, ensuring that by the time Lisa gave birth, both mother and baby were able to go home, healthy.
“When our patients meet the doctors and midwives before they deliver, they feel safer and heard. They know what to expect when they come in,” says Charlene Amey, Director of Perinatal Nursing Services at MLKCH.
MLKCH now has six midwives on staff, covering both the prenatal visits in the clinic and the Labor and Delivery department 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that delivering mothers always have the support of a midwife available. Patients are able to labor at their own pace, maintaining a sense of control over the process. It’s helped ensure that 95% of moms coming in to deliver their babies have received prenatal care, and helps MLKCH maintain a C-section rate 10% below the national average.
Lactation educators are also available to support moms with breastfeeding. Lupe, who has delivered two boys at MLKCH, wasn’t feeling confident about breastfeeding, but after meeting with the lactation educator over several sessions, she said, “Once I went home, I knew I would be able to feed [them] on my own.”
It’s a common sentiment amongst birthing mothers at MLKCH: feeling heard, having trust in the staff, and being supported before, during and after birth. In a community long neglected and denied care by healthcare systems, personal relationships with MLKCH staff and supportive programs have begun to rebuild trust.
The support of MLKCH’s partners can be felt throughout the health system: from the Diabetes Management Center of Excellence, to unhoused patients receiving care through Street Medicine; from an integrated behavioral health program that addresses patients’ mental health care throughout diagnoses, to internal medicine residents learning culturally-aligned care, and more. A generous unrestricted gift from the Smidt Foundation has allowed MLKCH to sustain programs like these and change what quality care looks like in South LA.
Investments like these from L.A. Care Health Plan, and the Hilton, Parsons, and Smidt Foundations, have been fundamental to the ways MLKCH is able to provide the best care for its community. “Ultimately, gifts to MLKCH, of all sizes, ripple out over entire families and generations,” says Sharon.
Patients feel it in breaths that come easier, hear it in conversations they have with medical staff who go above and beyond, and see it on the faces of their healthy, newborn babies—the gifts these partnerships have provided will be felt long into the future.
*pseudonym used