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Fall 2007

From its humble beginnings seven years ago as a collaborative effort between seven California counties and seven Mexican states, Binational Health Week (BHW) has grown to be the largest grassroots health-promotion effort in the hemisphere and an important forum for policies on binational health.

This year, Binational Health Week—which runs October 13–21—will have participation from 34 U.S. states, three provinces of Canada, 46 Mexican consulates, and, for the first time, Guatemalan and Salvadoran consulates. Though BHW’s reach has expanded—to nearly 300,000 participants in 2006 in the United States alone—its fundamental mission of offering health promotion and education programs to migrants and immigrants from Mexico and Central America has stayed the same.

grassroots to treetops

Although its activities are largely on-the-ground efforts with immigrant populations themselves, the week’s official launch on October 15 includes a Policy Forum on Migration and Health that will take place at The California Endowment’s Center for Healthy Communities. The Center is a fitting location, according to Mario Gutierrez, director of The Endowment’s Agricultural Worker and Rural Health Programs, given that the Los Angeles region has the largest Mexican population outside of Mexico City and that the largest share of the underserved in California are from Mexico or Central America.

“Diseases and social conditions have no borders,” Gutierrez says. “By hosting this international policy forum at our Center for Healthy Communities, we are publicly demonstrating our values and reaffirming our commitment to our multicultural approach to health promotion and improvement, and to the power of our grassroots and treetops approach to achieving responsive policy and systems change.”

policy sessions will yield action plan

Local, state and international leaders will come together at the policy forum to discuss issues such as chronic and degenerative diseases, binational health insurance, occupational health and mental health. And, for the first time, participants will be asked to go beyond presentation
and discussion and identify specific action strategies, which will then become a working policy agenda for the Health Initiative of the Americas, a research arm of the Office of the President of the University of California.

The policy sessions will be attended by members of various levels of government, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Speaker of the California State Assembly Fabian Nuñez, CEO and Provost of the University of California Rory Hume, Secretary of California Health and Human Services Kim Belshé, and Minister of Health of Mexico Dr. José Angel Córdova Villalobos.

“Our ultimate hope is that this approach will lead to concrete systems and policy changes that benefit the health of Latino immigrant workers and families, and the communities in which they live,” Gutierrez says. “Providing this opportunity for high-level, transnational policymakers, researchers, advocates and community leaders to come together opens up a wealth of mutual understanding and potential solutions that would not be possible otherwise.”

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BINATIONAL HEALTH WEEK, OCT. 13-21, HOLDS INAUGURAL EVENT AT THE CENTER FOR HEALTHY COMMUNITIES
Policy Forum Puts Binational Health Ideas into Action