LA Net Advisory
Council Members

John A Kotick, JD (Chairman)
Family Health Care Centers of Greater Los Angeles

Mohsen Bazargan, Ph.D.
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science

Condessa Curley, MD
Eisner Pediatrics and Family Medical Center

Ignacio DeArtola , MD
Cleaver Family Wellness Center

Grace Floutsis, MD
Clinica Msr. Oscar A. Romero

Lillian Gelberg, MD, MSPH
University of California, Los Angeles

Ricardo G. Hahn, MD
University of Southern California

Sally Hur, Pharm. D.
QueensCare, Echo Park

Sarah Ingersoll, MSN, MBA, RN
American Medical Informatics Association
University of Southern California

Cristina Jose Kampher, PhD
AltaMed

June Levine. RN, MSN
Access to Care Collaborative

Carmela Lomonaco, PhD

Imelda Meza, MA
The Children’s Clinic

Kiki Nocella, PhD
University of California, Riverside

Felix Nuñez, MD, MPH
Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County

Elise Pomerance, MD
East Valley Community Health Center

Jehni Robinson, MD
The Los Angeles Free Clinic

Michael A. Rodríguez, MD, MPH
University of California, Los Angeles

Richard Seidman, MD, MPH
LA Care

Maureen Strohm, MD
California Hospital Medical Center

Ava Lenda Waldman
AIDS Research Alliance

LA Net’s mission is to engage community based providers and their patients in identifying and conducting studies aimed at reducing health disparities among low-income, minority and underserved patients in the Los Angeles area.  It does this by providing infrastructure and processes that enable community-based primary care clinicians and their patients to move from the “subjects” of health services research, to the initiators and leaders of these efforts.  LA Net does this by providing participatory processes to engage clinicians and patients in discussions about real world concerns in primary care; assisting clinicians and their patients in developing applications for grant funding; providing training to clinicians and patients in research methods; providing staff to assist in designing and carrying out all aspects of evaluation research studies and efficacy and effectiveness trials of health services innovations; providing support to clinicians and patients in disseminating their findings to the broader community, and in implementing and sustaining evidence based changes in their own health care delivery processes within their particular practices. 

Founded in 2002, LA Net provides opportunities for primary care providers (MDs, NPs, PAs, MAs and allied health professionals) to conduct research that can directly impact the quality of primary health care services delivered to vulnerable populations in Los Angeles and through out Southern California, and that has implications for improving the health of minority patients and communities.

LA Net's mission to reduce minority health disparities is especially relevant in the current setting of Los Angeles County and throughout California. Health care for uninsured and underinsured populations is becoming increasingly difficult within a struggling health care system. In Los Angeles County, numerous community clinics and hospitals have closed due to the County's economic crisis; and those that have survived the cutbacks must shoulder new burdens. Research conducted through LA Net can help providers ask and answer important questions about the impact of these changes on their practice and their patients.

LA Net is committed to conducting grass-roots provider-driven research on primary care, patient outcomes and community health. Each year, during the annual LA Net forum, providers join together to identify questions they believe to be the most pressing within their practice and in their patients, and to select from among these one or two for implementation in the Network. In addition, the Network welcomes participation and partnerships with researchers outside the network. Outside researchers are invited to approach the network about project ideas. These ideas are then put forward to the network, and then a participatory engagement process is used to help the research and network providers to co-construct projects that are of importance to the network, and the researcher. While its primary commitment to bottom-up, provider generated projects, the Network will also from time to time take on external projects put forward by the federal government and national foundations that are of particular importance to the network's development or its providers and patient populations.