The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is committed to meaningful community engagement with individuals, neighborhoods, communities, and partners. The Office of Planning, Integration, and Engagement's Community Engagement Unit develops and implements a department-wide infrastructure for inclusive partner engagement across all programmatic efforts through policy development, capacity building, and resource alignment.

The Community Engagement Unit's programs and projects include the following:

• Public Health AmeriCorps

• Community Public Health Teams (CPHT)

• Community Health Worker (CHW) Initiatives

• Sector Engagement Team (SET)

    Email addresses:
    Community Engagement: DPH-CommEngagement@ph.lacounty.gov
    Sector Engagement: DPH-SectorEngagement@ph.lacounty.gov
    Community Health Worker Programs: CHWSON@ph.lacounty.gov

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) has partnered with AmeriCorps to recruit, train, and support the development of the next generation of public health leaders.

AmeriCorps members engage in community outreach, health education, and resource sharing in the most highly impacted communities located within Los Angeles County. Members are assigned to one of the eight Service Planning Areas (SPAs) in Los Angeles and work to meet the unique health needs of communities within their assigned region.

To learn more visit the AmeriCorps webpage.

Community Public Health Teams (CPHT) is a Public Health project that brings together community-based organizations, health care partners, and Public Health staff. These teams work at the household level, conducting home visits to gather health needs and connect people to care. These teams also work at the community level, inviting people to participate in creating community action plans.

This is a new approach to public health and health care in LA County. Public Health is investing public health infrastructure dollars to implement this pilot project for five years, beginning August 2023. The goal is to build long-term relationships with households, empower communities to define the health priorities that matter to them, and demonstrate that this new way of engagement can support better health outcomes.

To learn more, visit the CPHT webpage.

The Community Health Worker Outreach Initiative mobilizes community health workers (CHWs) to conduct grassroots community outreach to amplify accurate, up-to-date information regarding COVID-19 throughout LA County. The information is tailored to those most impacted by the coronavirus. This initiative builds infrastructure for a community-based system of response and fosters collaboration across different peer outreach models, including violence intervention, Promotores, parent advocates, worker advocates, and others. The Community Health Worker Outreach Initiative mobilizes more than 100 CHWs by contracting with a fiscal lead agency to coordinate 18 community-based contracts to leverage existing networks of CHWs and other peer providers.

To learn more, visit the CHWOI webpage.

The Sector Engagement Team (SET) sustains and builds on sector relationships developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, expanding Public Health's ability to disseminate and retrieve information on emerging health topics with various sectors. SET also develops and supports infrastructure to facilitate coordination and collaboration among Public Health programs and other County departments for engaging with a variety of community stakeholders.

To learn more, visit the Sector Engagement webpage.