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In the midst of a global pandemic, local health officials and statewide health experts admitted a lack of data on the Middle East and North African community made it impossible to see what impact COVID-19 had on those residents.
Around that same time, the Orange County Health Care Agency launched a $20 million Center for Disease Control funded initiative – dubbed Equity in OC – to help address COVID disparities and health inequities in underserved and multicultural communities.
Those efforts came after a push by local community health organizations like Latino Health Access, resulting in lowered positivity rates and heightened vaccination rates in Orange County’s communities hit hardest by COVID-19.
The pandemic put various health gaps under a microscope.
[Read: Pandemic Pushes OC Public Health Officials to Focus on Inequities in Poor Neighborhoods]
But leaders from over a dozen nonprofits – many of which primarily serve residents from the South Asian, Middle Eastern and North African (SAMENA) communities – say county leaders overlooked them when they started focusing on serving marginalized communities.
So, they joined forces to advocate for their own collective to be funded through the initiative to ensure that if another public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic hit OC again their communities won’t fall between the cracks.
In July, those leaders announced the launch of SAMENA, a collective made up of 17 groups that specialize in either charity, advocacy or health and supportive services.
Their mission is to address health inequities and quality of life issues in the South Asian, Middle Eastern and North African communities in Orange County.
The collective was funded with $150,000 from the Equity in OC initiative.
Other nonprofits who formed collectives got $380,000 in funding through the initiative – $230,000 more than the SAMENA collective, according to the OC Health Care Agency.
A New Collective Voice at The Table
Nahla Kayali, founder and executive director of Access California Services – the lead agency in the collective, said in a phone interview the collective will be the center for data collection on these communities to ensure resources are created to help meet the needs of residents.
“It’s been so long that the SAMENA community has faced systemic neglect and under-representation,” she said. “We united to form a collective voice, ensuring we have a seat at the decision making tables, especially with healthcare agencies and to be a part of the decision making process at the county level, state level and federal level.”
The pandemic brought to light many health inequities immigrant populations often face – things like disproportionate rates of heart disease, a lack of health care and overcrowded living situations.
[Read: Could OC’s New Health Inequity Map Lead to Real Systemic Change?]
Rida Hamida, advocacy and policy chair for SAMENA, hopes the collective will bring attention to a host of issues in those communities that seem to be invisible to county leaders and help them understand the needs of these residents so they can better address them.
“Now we’re united and I think that’s more powerful,” she said. “They’re going to see us as a collective and ensure that all of our communities are receiving not just adequate resources, but receiving their attention.”
Payal Sawhney, founder of Saahas for Cause, a nonprofit member of the collective that helps South Asian immigrants, also said the South Asian community is often overlooked when funding is allocated and policies are made at the government level because they are quiet.
“They don’t talk about their pains, they don’t express themselves, because that’s the culture,” she said. “Everybody has the entitlement for the same benefits, but the South Asian community gets discriminated a lot, sometimes because they don’t voice their issues.”
This collective, she says, will help her community be heard.
Pushing For Equity in Funding for SAMENA Communities
The first hurdle for the collective is getting their share of funding from the county.
But the CDC grant ended in May.
According to Dr. Veronica Kelly, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency, $12 million from the grant went out to selected providers that worked with over 200 nonprofit groups.
Now leaders with the SAMENA collective are asking county leaders for $200,000 in more funding to help the nonprofits expand, kickstart new programs to tackle health inequities in these communities and help with staffing.
“If any change is to be made, you have to invest in this work,” Sawhney said.
Hamida said the county overlooked the South Asian, Middle Eastern and North African communities when it came to funding and they received their money late in the game as the initiative was sun setting.
She added that they’re asking county supervisors like Vicente Sarmiento to set aside $200,000 in next year’s budget to ensure these communities get a fair share in funding like other collectives.
“This was supposed to be an equitable process,” Hamida said. “This is re-perpetuating the inequitable resources within our community and also re- perpetuating the disparity and disproportionate resources within our communities.”
When asked if the county will allocate money for the collective, Sarmiento said in an email that his office will keep pushing for federal and state funding streams to support all the collectives in the county.
“Many residents in my district are part of this collective, and it’s crucial that we have the tools to effectively identify and address service gaps that exist within these communities/groups,” he wrote.
Tackling SAMENA Issues
The 17 organizations have laid out a host of objectives they want to achieve as a collective that intends to be an advocacy voice for Afghani, Indian, Egyptian, Yemeni, Burmese, Nepali, Palestinian, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and more communities in OC.
This includes partnering with the OC Health Care Agency to develop culturally sensitive rapid response services to support the communities in the event of another public health crisis like the pandemic, as well as share information on benefits and resources to community members.
Hina Ahmad, deputy director of the South Asian Network – another nonprofit in the collective – said people often face language barriers.
“The Health Care Agency is supposed to provide language interpreters. Oftentimes, for our communities, they do not,” she said.
An initial survey conducted by the collective identified other top needs in the community as employment and financial assistance, housing affordability, mental health services, disability services, immigration services as well as tackling islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism.
“Housing is another big barrier. A lot of our community members don’t understand or know what their housing rights are,” Ahmad said.
“In the SAMENA community, you’ll often see multi-generational families living in one unit so you’ll see five, six, up to 10 people living in one apartment complex.”
Kayali said the services the collective strives to provide with the right amount of funding can uplift so many people in these communities that have long been ignored.
“Once they are able to overcome all their barriers,” she said. “They’re going to be successful contributing citizens.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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