Over the past 40 years, the United States has experienced a profound demographic shift. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, domestic demand for low-wage agricultural labor fueled the influx of predominantly-male Mexican immigrants. By the late 1990s, as demand spread into industries such as food service, the ratio of male to female Latinx immigrants reached parity. By 2000, census data officially recognized Latinx people as the largest minority group in the United States. From 2000 to 2010, Latinxs accounted for more than 50 percent of the nation’s population growth. Today, growth of the Latinx community extends beyond border states, rural America, and traditional urban centers. As is clearly evidenced in South Philadelphia, where the number of Latinx immigrants has risen from 6,220 in 2000 to an estimated 30,000 at present. Working in low-paying jobs, lacking health care benefits and facing linguistic and cultural barriers, a high percentage of this population exists precariously with respect to health. Despite these obvious challenges, the South Philadelphia Latinx community abounds with robust, rapidly growing, and hardworking families.
In order to best serve the immediate health care needs of Philadelphia’s burgeoning Latinx community, Dr. Jack Ludmir and Dr. Steven Larson organized a series of meetings with local health care stakeholders in 2003. The convening participants—representing academic institutions, social service organizations, and health care establishments—ultimately concluded that a traditional biomedical model of health care delivery would prove ineffective in meeting the complex needs of this immigrant population.
In 2004, Dr. Matthew O’Brien joined Drs. Ludmir and Larson at which point they decided to design and build a new immigrant health and wellness center. Beginning with grassroots advocacy efforts, including a series of town meetings, health fairs, and screenings, the doctors created a forum in which community members could share their ideas about how to improve the health and wellness of their community. Using the information gathered from these efforts, the doctors clarified the foundation of Puentes de Salud: involving practitioners directly in the community, partnering to provide health care and educational programs, all while focusing long-term efforts on addressing the social determinants of health.
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