Community Assessment - Health & Quality of Life in San Mateo
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Other Special Populations

special populations

ethnic/cultural health needs

A few participants mentioned health concerns specifically for immigrants or particular ethnic groups.

"There’s a large Hispanic population in places like Redwood City. There’s been in the past a big project from Stanford trying to decrease cardiovascular risk factors in the Hispanic populations, because the issues that we’ve come to accept in terms of exercise and other things are not yet well accepted in those populations."
— Physician

"The immigrant population, we don’t have something like a direct service for the new arrivals. In San Francisco they have a new arrival sort of group, they see whatever their needs are. In Daly City, I’m very much involved in the Daly City Filipino Organizing Project and these are low-income people, new arrivals. We help them reach other agencies that are available in the community…"
— Social Services Representative

 

disabled

When discussing the disabled population, social service representatives first stressed the disabled have the same difficulties obtaining health care services as other populations, including a lack of transportation and affordable care. They further identified the needs for early diagnosis and treatment, mental health treatment, and community-based services.

"A lot of the issues we have talked about for other populations would apply to the disabled population as well. Certainly lack of housing and transportation, affordable care."
— Social Services Representative

"All of what you’re saying I think applies to our families, too, but they also have the added challenge of having a family member with a disability. We see some very unique situations that come up that are also fairly typical, the language issues, the cultural issues, they’re all there. We have a program for the families and infants. One of the big issues there is early diagnosis by the physicians and then early access to the services available to them. The problem I see coming down the road for us: all of our funds for our programs are filtered through the state through the regional center system which is kind of a managed care system in and of itself. We’re seeing programs that have been set up, have been successful and really begun to expand because of going years without rate increases. We’re going to start to see the dismantling of these services and diminishing of their impact. With our group, we also have a senior program, it’s typical for us to see Alzheimer’s and the other dementia can set in in the early 40s."
— Social Services Representative

"Mental health is an issue because you need somebody who can understand the needs of a developmentally disabled person, especially if they’re autistic. Trying to find mental health professionals that can work with them…"
— Social Services Representative

"Maybe you have all read some of the ongoing Chronicle articles about people coming out of the developmental centers. As they come out into the community, the systems are not in place to take care of these things and they become somewhat at risk in terms of their health."
— Social Services Representative

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