C'mon, Get HAPI: Alternative Pain Management

Health Care Access

Central LA

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

More than 1 in 10 American adults experienced pain every day during the last 3 months. Nearly 40 million felt severe pain. People with severe pain have worse health, use more health care, and have greater disability levels. Chronic pain and mental health disorders are also deeply intertwined. Depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders are widely experienced by individuals with chronic pain. To address their pain, many people turn to opioids. The misuse of and addiction to opioids-including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl-is a national crisis. All people deserve safe, affordable and effective alternatives for pain management. For example, acupuncture has been used in Asia for centuries to treat many conditions and relieve pain. It can ease low back pain, nerve pain, headaches, fibromyalgia, menstrual cramps - and more. SCC wants to make acupuncture, shockwave therapy and other drug alternatives, available to more people.

To provide patients with alternative, effective pain management, SCC has launched a Holistic Approach Pain Intervention (HAPI) Clinic. The HAPI Clinic employs Eastern and Western medical techniques to optimize pain relief and restore health. Patients are co-managed with their primary care provider and appointments are by referral from SCC providers only. The Clinic is offered 3 days a week. SCC hopes to expand the treatment methods at HAPI Clinic to include shockwave therapy (helps to treat chronic tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, and Achilles tendonitis, among other conditions). With this new machine, and additional financial support, more patients can access the benefits of alternative pain management. The HAPI Clinic is run by Dr. Tinh Vuong, a board certified Family Medicine Physician who is also a licensed acupuncturist. She completed her medical training at Harbor UCLA. Her interests are in integrative and regenerative medicine, combining Eastern and Western medicine to heal acute and chronic pain. With over 20 years of experience, she practices a holistic and integrative approach to stimulate the body's innate ability to heal itself back to vibrant health.

Through the HAPI Clinic, SCC anticipates having a positive, substantive and measurable impact for people in LA County who are struggling with pain management. In the short term, this grant would allow SCC to offer a minimum of 2000 pain management patient visits this year! In the longer term, SCC would like to expand the clinic to additional locations. Our main limitations currently are physical space and funding for more staff providers. With a grant from LA2050, we can begin to expand the work and scope of the HAPI Clinic. Together, we can help low-income, medically under-served patients access the quality, compassionate pain management they deserve.

Across all of its programs, SCC tracks quantitative measures, such as the number of patients served, patient visits, outreach contacts, service referrals and demographic data. SCC also tracks qualitative measures such as patient feedback and program quality through Patient Satisfaction Surveys, consumer board members, and staff feedback. In addition to staff reports and patient satisfaction surveys, SCC will use existing tools such as its OCHIN/EPIC E.H.R System to measure and evaluate success. Data tracked in these systems guide and evaluate the Clinic's operations, giving the Clinic an idea of where funds would best be allocated, which programs need more staffing, which programs are reaching their goals and which require improvement. For the HAPI Clinic, patient self-reporting has been critically important to measuring pain control levels before and after treatment.