(upbeat music)
Welcome to Conversations With the Winners.
I'm here today with Te Jay McGrath
and we are talking about health equity.
Te Jay is a winner
of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award
for Health Equity.
Te Jay, welcome.
Hello, good to see you again.
Well, tell us a little bit more
about the TAY link project.
You mentioned it was to help vulnerable young people.
In what way?
So the TAY link program came about, about four years ago.
We're actually starting our last year,
it's a four year grant
through the Department of Mental Health
here in Los Angeles County.
And basically it was a program designed
to target the hard to reach population
of the 18 to 24 group of people
that are in major need of basic necessities and resources.
As of March of this year,
we've had over a hundred people enrolled in our program,
and through those a hundred people
we've been able to offer housing,
whether it be medical, motel voucher,
to transitional housing, medical services
for transgender TAY to, oh gosh, you name it,
groceries once a month,
and just to fill up gas in their tank.
Te Jay, one of the approaches you took
for systems change was actually connecting elements
and components of the system.
Can you tell us a little bit more
about those partnerships
and how that those connections actually
improve the experience for the people you serve?
The community organization can't do it by themselves.
We all need to be in this collaborative network
for someone to really become that individual,
young adult, independent person in society.
And I always think of it,
I always go back to this thing
that a supervisor once told me,
"If you're envisioning a really steep hill,
and you have a small person
pushing this really large boulder,
it's the role of the community
to kind of be behind that person to push the boulder up
much faster and more effectively."
That's how I see community collaboration.
Te Jay, you talk about barriers,
barriers that maybe we can see
and barriers we can't see,
but barriers that are nonetheless experienced.
Can you talk to us
about those barriers and help us see them?
Prime example was the pandemic.
Imagine yourself experiencing homelessness
and everything is just shut down or closed around you,
which is where our program came in.
We were able to, you know,
allocate funds to start this emergency motel program
to house those experiencing homelessness,
TAY and even seniors.
Through this program, we were able to offer showers.
They were offered meals three times a day, laundry services,
and then ongoing case management and housing navigation
as well.
And if you think about it,
it's kind of a trickling effect
because we were able to use local restaurants to,
you know, feed the participants.
We kept small businesses afloat
that had to shut down, like, the laundry services.
It just felt like a really big community effort,
which, you know, in the end,
lowered as many barriers as possible
for the homeless community.
You mentioned that things actually got worse
for many of the people you serve.
Tell us more about that.
Well, you know, I don't know about you,
but I love a success story.
And out of like, the hardest times,
comes those types of stories.
For example, we had a mother that was pregnant,
and she was experiencing domestic violence
and the pandemic hit.
And then she was kicked out on the street,
and then she was able to participate in our program.
And over the three months in our motel program
she got housing navigation, the ongoing case management
with her case managers, she was able to get services
through domestic violence education and educators.
And now she is linked to another one
of our partners where they took her to her own apartment,
she had the baby, and we're continuing to work with her by,
you know, checking in with her once a week.
She gets diapers if she needs, for the toddler,
you name it, we're still there.
So it's kind of like this full circle moment.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award
for Health Equity is about systems change.
Talk to us about that.
How did you change the system,
or influence the change of the system?
When you try to engage with a homeless individual
to cultural sensitivity and confidence,
when you're trying to help someone
from a different culture than you,
it's all about stripping away all your biases
and what you've learned, and to just, you know,
take it in with open arms.
But we need that on a bigger level.
We have a higher population of the Black and Brown community
in the north.
And then in south we have the white and Asian communities.
So it's very important to have as many stakeholders
at the table when it comes to implementing changes
and new policies that we want to see put forth
in the community.
Te Jay, share your thoughts with us about health equity.
If you think about it, I think a lot of people
don't understand how big of an issue health inequity is
when it comes to our Black and Brown communities,
Asian communities,
and even the LGBT individuals in our communities.
I feel like there's a lot of work to be done
to really spread the word
and awareness about health inequities.
Te Jay, help us get to know the people that are served
by the TAY link program.
The TAY link program
serves amazing, incredible individuals.
I mentioned to you before,
we serve the 18 to 24 transitional age youth
homeless population,
and they represent the whole spectrum
that you can think of that a human can be.
They're resilient individuals,
they're people who want better lives.
These are young adults that are, you know,
going to school, living in their cars,
juggling a part-time job and dealing with mental health.
So it's amazing to see the transformation
after going through this program.
I know that it takes a lot of guts and courage
just to ask for help, especially at that age.
And once they get past that first step,
it's a smooth hill from there.
Te Jay, your innovative solutions improve the well-being
of not only youth, but the entire community.
Thank you for your leadership,
and congratulations on your award.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us for this conversation,
and you are invited
to more conversations with the 2020 winners
of the RWJF Award for Health Equity.
And you can learn more
about all of the winners at RWJF.org.
I'm Jacinta Gauda, and thank you for watching.