Inglewood Hospital Ends Maternal Health Care (And Other Headlines)

Centinela Hospital Medical Center’s labor and delivery ward closes today, leaving a gap in reproductive health care for Inglewood residents. Last month, my colleague Mariana Dale wrote about the announcement of the maternity ward’s closure, months after a Black woman named April Valentine died during childbirth in the hospital.

Transferring maternity services

With the facility’s closure, existing and new patients would need to go to St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, eight to 10 miles away, which could take nearly an hour via public transportation.

Black Women for Wellness staff shared during the meeting that the organization had surveyed nearly 600 Inglewood residents by phone and in person in the last two weeks, and they found that the majority did not previously know the hospital would end its obstetrics, labor, and delivery services.

More than two dozen people gathered in Inglewood Monday night to share their concerns about losing healthcare access and to brainstorm how to move forward.

“There is a general consensus that folks do not receive quality care at Centinela Hospital,” said maternal and infant health program coordinator Gabrielle Brown. “We're looking to figure out why and find solutions to ensure that Black and brown bodies receive the quality of care that they truly deserve.”

Read the full story here.

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Wait... one more thing

Filipinos in SoCal

Filipino sailors in photo dated 1923

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Courtesy Filipino American National Heritage Society

)

Mabuhay! October is Filipino American History Month and Filipinos have a history that spans more than 400 years in Southern California. As a Filipino immigrant, I learned a lot from this story and it inspired me to do even more reading. Here are some key takeaways I learned:

The first recorded landing of Filipinos was in Morro Bay, California in 1587.

In downtown Los Angeles, “Filipinos actually developed and created a kind of small Little Manila (now Historic Filipinotown) around First and Main Street,” said Joseph Bernardo, adjunct professor in the Asian and Asian Pacific American Studies Department at Loyola Marymount University.

Learn more about Filipinos’ SoCal history here.