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Executive Summary
"Choosing Healthcare in South Chicago: Information Strategies and Provider Choices"
Research Intern: Ericka Menchen, and Andrea Rincon
Community Partner: Centro Comunitario Juan Diego
 Formally incorporated in 1994 by a group of Mexican women, Centro Comunitario Juan Diego (CCJD) is a welcoming and inclusive grassroots organization. CCJD offers a variety of services, including low-cost child car seats, food pantry, free or extremely low cost clothing, asthma, diabetes and HIV/AIDS classes, English as a Second Language, computer classes, community based faith group, summer program for children, plus several more, and new programs are planned as well. They pride themselves on being able to provide these services with very little funding because of their strong spirit of volunteerism and commitment to this community, their own community.
The Question(s): What is healthcare?
 It is common to think of healthcare providers as limited to Western-style medical facilities that treat disease, the doctor's office, the hospital, the clinic, but our focus was more holistic. What about the grocery store and the food pantry that provide nutrition? What about over the counter medications, home remedies, and traditional healers? What about preventive care, such as health education, outreach, and exercise? The objective was not to survey or map the available facilities, but to see which ones, both inside and outside South Chicago, were being used by the residents and why.
- How are the people getting information about health and wellness care, and how are organizations serving the neighborhood getting the word out about their services?
- When options are available, how are the people making choices?
- Where are the people of South Chicago accessing health and wellness care?
- What services are provided, and what is their perceived quality?
Methods:
A combination of participant observation, semi-structured, and structured interviewing were used as data collection methods. STRIVE, a job-training program, allowed the ethnographers to contact their program participants as well as CCJD. The interns utilized their language skills and arranged interviews accordingly. Respondents were first asked a series of open-ended questions about their healthcare choices and history of experiences, and then four basic areas of healthcare were explored, home healthcare, emergency care, chronic care, and wellness.
Key Findings:
- 1) Lack of consumer medical information is a well documented and recognized problem felt by all of the service providers and residents in South Chicago. Many area facilities provide referrals to their clients and do outreach on certain topics, but there is no service that is focused on information dissemination as its primary purpose.
- 2) Many people find out about health services from their friends and family, but this word of mouth information needs to originate from somewhere, and hopefully this is a reliable source.
- 3) People who consider themselves 'healthy' don't actively seek information on health services, but they do walk around the neighborhood, and are likely to be passively interested in these services, especially if they are free and easily accessible.
- 4) Both the service providers and the residents agreed that there was a lack of reliable health service information in the community, particularly for local services.
- 5) Most commonly, people found out about a service they now use through direct interaction with another person who they know, word of mouth.
- 6) The majority of our informants associated health only with the absence of illness, regardless of disease.
- 7) The first preference for treatment of non-emergency conditions was some form of self-treatment.
- 8) The use of alternative medicine was much less frequent than anticipated, but there is a strong possibility that people did not feel comfortable discussing this issue.
Findings in Action:
Both of the interns have joined the governing board of Centro Comunitario Juan Diego, to continue their advocacy and to remain involved. For public education purposes and to address the concerns raised in their findings they recommend that services make full use of the communicative potential of their exterior space. Bold signage should be bilingual and flyers may be used in conjunction, to both catch attention and give specific information. Bilingual staff could also help resolve public health education and services issues.
 Their proposal is for a storefront information center on Commercial Avenuewhich would focus on healthcare, but also offer additional information on neighborhood events, jobs, etc. In their proposal the interns designed a floor plan and provided a photo-enhanced image of the potential storefront health services info center.  The door would be open and there would be a welcoming and helpful bilingual Spanish / English staff from community ho could assist people with gathering information. This job could be shared by a part time African American and a part time Latino to avoid the Information Center being seen as 'a black place' or 'a Latino place.' Having more than one person do the job may avoid one set of interconnected people from dominating the center. Also if there are people of different genders employed this may also facilitate the flow of information because studies have shown that men have difficulty admitting illness to women, and women often feel embarrassed by men. There could also be staff members who could gather and post relevant and timely information at the center.
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