Los Angeles Community Hospitals' Employees Donate Food and Supplies to Residential Care and Assisted Living Residents

Employees of Los Angeles Community Hospitals are giving back to the communities during the COVID-19 crisis, delivering bags of food and supplies to the 300 residential care and assisted living facilities. These facilities are vulnerable to shortages of food and household supplies due supply chain challenges and quantity restrictions at grocery stores.

The supplies are distributed each week and provide much-needed food and paper goods to more than 1,000 vulnerable residents in Los Angeles and Orange County.

“Our communities are being impacted at many levels with the coronavirus,” said Los Angeles Community Hospitals’ CEO Hector Hernandez. “As a hospital we provide for the care of patients within our walls, but noticed an increasing need outside our walls. We wanted to help residential care and assisted living residents, who are primarily elderly, developmentally disabled or mentally disordered.”

The hospitals’ care coordinators comb stores daily to search for food, paper towels, toilet paper and other items. “We call it our daily treasure hunt,” said Kathleen Navejas, senior vice president, care coordination. She added that the items are then sorted and distributed by the care coordinators and sent to the facilities via Uber.

“Donating to these facilities takes on a different meaning when you know that your contribution may be one of the only ways the facility gets eggs or milk that week,” said Navejas.

Typical care packages include water, milk, eggs, bread, canned goods, soup, canned milk, peanut butter and jelly and dry food items, as well as sanitizer, masks, gloves, paper towels, soaps, wipes, bleach and toilet paper.

Anyone who wants to make a donation to this effort can drop off food and supply donations at Los Angeles Community Hospital, Norwalk Community Hospital or Bellflower Behavioral Health Hospital, or call (323) 350-0111 to arrange for a pick-up.