Jessica Portner

Little Clinic, Huge Heart

Dr. Dimitri Sirakoff, the founder and medical director of Serve the People Health Center, rushed around his small, bright clinic tucked into an office complex in Santa Ana one recent afternoon. Whipping around in his white-coat and clutching charts in hand, the doctor has the impatient demeanor of a man on a mission. Sirakoff started this clinic with a skeleton staff because he saw in his own private practice a great need to serve the community of poor, low-income, and primarily Latino patients in Santa Ana who could not afford health care.

Canadian Study Says Patients Fare Better in Higher-spending Hospitals

By Jessica Portner

Seriously ill patients treated in higher-spending hospitals in Ontario, Canada had lower death rates, fewer hospital re-admissions, and fewer repeat heart attacks, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

VoiceWaves, youth journalist’s website, makes a splash in Long Beach

By Jessica Portner

VoiceWaves, a new website, features the work of young people trained as journalists, a group that brings relevant news to their underserved community.

Minority nursing home residents increase, whites decline

By Jessica Portner

More elders from minority groups are ending up in nursing homes in the Long Beach and Los Angeles areas, reflecting a national trend. And they aren’t there because it’s their preference, experts say, but because it’s a financial necessity.

Athletes with disabilities find Outdoor Adventures in Long Beach

By Jessica Portner

Exercise helps everyone, but physical activity is especially important for people with disabilities. A annual water camp in Long Beach gives people with disabilities a chance to get out on the waves.

Homeless for Years, Older Women in Los Angeles Find a Good Home

By Jessica Portner

On Skid Row, the downtown hub of the homeless population in Los Angeles, transients ask passersby for change, slump against concrete buildings, and mumble obscenities at bus stops. The Downtown Women’s Center’s beautiful new building, sitting in the middle of the mayhem, is a standout. The DWC’s Day Center serves hundreds of homeless women in its facilities every day and 71 lucky ones live in permanent residences, or efficiency apartments.

Older adult volunteers reap the rewards of giving back

By Jessica Portner

Most mornings, 90-year-old Joe Capra drives his Cadillac around town to local bakeries and coffee spots and delivers the goodies to the hospitality center at Leisure World that opens every day at 9am. The spry Capra, who has lived in the sprawling retirement community in Orange County town of Seal Beach for 13 years, was recently recognized for logging about 3,500 hours of picking up breakfast treats for his fellow residents.

Long Beach Communities, Clinics Drive to Extinguish Asthma Problem

By Jessica Portner

As surfers cruise on blue-green surf and seagulls perch on the soft sand, it’s hard to see Long Beach as anything other than a picturesque beach town, especially when it’s teaming with summer tourists. But some of the city’s 450,000 residents say that their environment is less than idyllic and that the air they breathe is making them sick.

Central Long Beach community garden plants knowledge, sows safety

By Jessica Portner

Tucked into a corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Park in a high-crime Central Long Beach neighborhood, the Peace Garden has become a community-gathering place and popular outdoor classroom since far-flung neighborhood groups and city leaders built the verdant patch last year.

Author: Jessica Portner

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