June 18, 1999
The UCLA School of Medicine and the California Latino Medical Association will release the results of a major study on the state's Latino physician shortage at a press conference on Friday, June 18, at the UCLA Medical Center.
The report will be released simultaneously with the first comprehensive registry of all Latino physicians in California. Compiled by UCLA's Center for the Study of Latino Health (CESLA), the "Directory of Latino/Hispanic Physicians - 1999" includes the names and addresses of Latino medical-care providers and physicians - listed both alphabetically and by city - who are licensed to practice in the state.
The study cites that for every non-Latino physician in the state, there are 335 non-Latino Californians. However, for every Latino physician in the state, there are 2,893 Latino Californians. When comparing the ratio of California's Latino population per Latino physician, California has a worse population to physician ratio than all of Latin America, including such countries as Honduras, Nicaragua and Bolivia.
"These figures clearly demonstrate that Latino physicians are greatly underrep-resented in the state," said David E. Hayes-Bautista, a UCLA professor of medicine and director of CESLA. "This is the direct result of the lack of access to higher education and the medical profession that Latinos face."
The first-of-its-kind study identified 3,578 Latino physicians out of a total of 74,345 physicians of all ethnicities practicing in California.
While Latinos comprise 30.4 percent of the state population, Latino physicians account for only 4.8 percent of all physicians licensed in California.
The report and accompanying directory will have important policy implications in improving health care and access for California's Latino community, Hayes-Bautista said. Authors of the study suggest two areas for policy work: increasing the number of Latinos in the state's medical schools and training non-Latino physicians in culturally effective ways of providing medical services to Latinos.
"In matters of health, culture matters," Hayes-Bautista said. "Latino culture is not a mystery. With proper training, non-Latino physicians can learn to establish warm, effective relations with their Latino patients." He noted that the short supply of Latino physicians clearly would have some impact on the 10.4 million Latinos living in California, especially those that do not speak English.
"Access to medical care has been an ongoing problem for many Californians," Hayes-Bautista added. "For Latinos, however, the problem of access is compounded by issues of language and cultural competence. Even when they have insurance, they encounter difficulty finding physicians who can understand their illness experience and who can communicate clearly and effectively with them."
The study was conducted by the Center for the Study of Latino Health at UCLA. Founded in 1992, CESLA is a unit of UCLA's School of Medicine - Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research. Through its various projects, the center provides teaching, research, evaluation, technical assistance and provider training in various facets of Latino health. The center has conducted pivotal studies and demographic reports on the state's Latino population and health issues.
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