Students Spend Summer Caring for the Poor : Education: UCLA program for Oxnard College minorities gives them hands-on health clinic experience, hoping to spur them to pursue careers in their own communities.

Early each morning Blanca Estrada kisses her toddler goodby and heads for Los Angeles, enduring a three-hour bus ride through snarled traffic for the chance to work at minimum wages at low-income health clinics far from her home.

The young mother is one of 17 Oxnard College students participating in a program hosted by UCLA’s nursing school to spur minority, at-risk high school and college students to ultimately pursue medical professions in their own communities.

Working alongside 33 Los Angeles high school students, the Oxnard participants toil for minimum wage and $1,000 scholarships at six Los Angeles clinics serving poor people with high health risks.

Although the Oxnard students spend as many hours on buses as in clinics and more time with their classmates than their families, Estrada, 20, said the experience is worth it.

“There’s nothing like this available in Oxnard,” said Estrada, who hopes to become a pediatrician. “Being able to do this, to work with people from UCLA, is like a dream.”

Ron Jackson, vice president of student services at Oxnard College, agreed.

“This is really a unique opportunity for these students,” Jackson said. “It gives them exposure to other communities and to the four-year institution many of them hope to attend.”

Jackson said the college plans to apply for its own grant to run a similar program next summer.

The $220,000 program, called “It’s About Health,” is funded and operated under the umbrella of President Clinton’s Summer of Service, which gave grants to agencies and institutions throughout the country to allow 1,500 students nationwide to participate in various community-service projects.

“Our goal is to expose the students to a very broad scope of health and welfare needs so they can take that experience back to their own communities,” said Gwen Van Servellen, project director and nursing professor at UCLA. “We want these students to know that the medical profession needs them.”

Oxnard College student Victor Cardenas, 20, said he decided to apply for the program after becoming angry with the way physicians treat his mother, who has a bone disease.

“She feels intimidated because they treat her like a low-life and don’t know how to talk to her,” Cardenas said. “There are doctors who say they won’t take MediCal because it’s more paperwork than money.”

Cardenas said he hopes to become a doctor and set up a practice to serve poor people in Oxnard.

“There just is not enough good health care available for the people,” he said. “Since I started this program I’ve seen that this is a problem everywhere, not just in Oxnard.”

At the program’s inception in June, all of the Summer of Service participants from around the country gathered in San Francisco for a week of training and workshops. The Oxnard students then returned to Los Angeles for two additional weeks of preparation before venturing into the clinics for six weeks of hands-on experience.

By the time the program ends in August, the students will have worked with AIDS patients, homeless people and migrant farm workers at sites ranging from the Watts Health Center to the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles.

On a recent morning, 12 of the students descended on the American Indian Clinic in Bellflower.

Smiling and humming, Estrada screened patients, developed X-rays and gingerly held a saliva-sucking device as the clinic’s dentist performed a check-up on a child not much older than her own.

“I’m most interested in working with kids,” Estrada said. “This program, I think, will tell me definitely if I want to be a doctor.”

During slow times Estrada circulated through the tiny dental clinic waiting room, asking patients questions from an eight-page survey designed to locate children in dire need of health care.

Rena Yazzie, 34, of Simi Valley, who brought her three children in for check-ups, obliged by answering a series of questions (“Do your children have hepatitis, diabetes, diphtheria or AIDS?”)

Yazzie finally balked when asked her family income. “What do you want to know that for?” she asked, glaring at Estrada. “Don’t you think that’s kind of personal?”

Estrada explained that program organizers are hoping the surveys will yield a group of needy families that the UCLA nursing center can follow up on after the program ends next month.

“But you don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to,” she added.

Outside in a sunny courtyard, several of Estrada’s classmates waited to get tuberculosis tests--a prerequisite stipulated by the clinic before the students would be allowed to do hands-on work with the center’s clients.

Oxnard student Cassandra Elston, 23, turned pale with fear as the needle sunk into her arm. “I can’t stand needles,” Elston wailed, squeezing the hand of classmate Rosemary Ponce.

The ordeal completed, Elston offered her assessment: “You know when you hyperventilate and you feel all nervous? That’s how I felt.”

Her fear of needles led Elston to pursue a career in radiology. “I like working in a hospital and I want to help people, but I just can’t stand needles,” she said.

Elston spent the rest of the afternoon assisting with the clinic’s Women, Infants and Children program, handing out food coupons and caring for the babies of women who came in to watch nutrition videos.

Ponce, 22, who was a business major before deciding to go into nursing, hunched over a computer newly donated to the children’s program, setting up files and teaching employees basic word-processing skills.

“It’s been a hectic day and I’m short on staff,” project director Lucretia Peralta said. “It’s been great to have them and I’ll be sorry to see them go.”

The students would spend one more day at the American Indian Clinic, then regroup at UCLA for a day of discussion and training seminars before heading out to a new site.

As the afternoon waned, the students took off their lab coats, laid down their thermometers and boarded the bus for home.

“The ride is long, the hours are long,” grumbled Ponce, who has two small children. “Then I go home and take care of my kids and I don’t get to rest until I go to bed.”

Exhausted, Estrada curled up on her seat and closed her eyes.

“I’m tired and I hate buses,” she said. “But I can’t wait until tomorrow.”