These L.A. health teams go door to door with a question: What do you need?

On a sweltering morning in Watts, community health worker Elizabeth Calvillo rapped on a shut gate with her pen, hoping the sound would carry over the rumble of an airplane. Ashley Jackson works in the Pacoima office of Providence’s Community Public Health Team, where “successes” are listed on a poster. L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the pilot program emerged not only out of the successes seen in Costa Rica and Cuba, but out of the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it “became abundantly clear, particularly in lower resource communities, that people were very disconnected from services and support.” In many cases, “it wasn’t that they were necessarily uninsured or underinsured,” Ferrer said. In Pacoima, a working-class neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, many “people just don’t know those resources are available,” said Dionne Zantua, program manager for another team run by Providence Health & Services Foundation. Dedhia said that in Watts, for instance, the community “has been heavily surveyed, but the follow-up isn’t necessarily there all the time.” Another community health worker in Watts recalled that at one home, a man grew angry when the team stopped by, asking them, “Isn’t it obvious what the community needs?” But Ferrer said the program hinges on the fact that “a lot of people have things that they need help with — and they’re not getting help.” “We’ll build trust very quickly,” she said, “if we can deliver on that.”