Community Health Education

La Clínica recognized early on that healthier communities required guiding principles that integrated health education and prevention. As part of the “Movement” seeking to create change for a better and a healthier life for its community, our mission incorporated these principles. It understood that the community it served was disproportionately burdened by poor health and huge health disparities. The communities’ health was more than merely the absence of disease: It was the social well-being that included factors such as a “healthy body, healthy mind, healthy spirit and healthy environment.”

Since 1973 Community Health Education (CHE) has enhanced the lives of the diverse communities we serve by focusing on the social determinants of health in order to improve overall wellness and disease prevention. People free of preventable diseases live longer, healthier lives, and benefit the entire health care system by improving the quality of care as well as reducing health care costs. CHE’s long standing priority of preventing disease through education in the areas of healthy diets, regular exercise, and healthy lifestyle choices along with issues of culture, language/literacy, transportation options, education, socio-economics, social norms and attitudes, exposure to crime, violence, social disorders and sustainable environmental concerns are recognized by the National Prevention Council as “many of the strongest predictors of health and well-being.” We are pleased that we integrated these strategies into our health care delivery systems for over 40 years.