Oakland Chinatown holds the record for the highest number of pedestrian and vehicle accidents in the City of Oakland. In response, Asian Health Services embarked on a local campaign focused on increasing awareness among community members about pedestrian safety issues. Recognizing the limits of addressing pedestrian injuries from an educational outreach approach focused on changing individual behavior, this campaign with a community capacity building perspective. Exemplifying the tenets of the Prevention Institute’s California Campaign model to address health disparities, the current campaign now entitled Revive Chinatown! demonstrates how an ecological system approach can more effectively address a chronic public health problem, and how health centers can function as catalysts of community and economic development.

The nail salon sector is growing rapidly. Nail salon workers are predominantly Vietnamese immigrant women who are exposed to numerous harmful chemicals in nail care products. The situation is exacerbated by limited safety information, language barriers to information, and lack of government oversight. This brief discusses the health and safety issues faced by workers at the nexus of environmental and worker justice and the policy recommendations by which to address these issues from a public health and regulatory perspective. Although these policy recommendations pertain to California where the sector is largest, they also have far-reaching implications at the national level.

This article describes: 1) internal and external factors enabling the expansion of health care access to Burmese and Karen refugees, 2) operational processes required to expand integrated primary health care services to this emerging community, 3) the importance of culturally and linguistically competent services that incorporate prior experiences of forced immigration, and 4) les- sons learned and what to expect when expanding health care access to new populations within a federally qualified health center (FQHC). This case study may provide a blueprint for other FQHCs seeking to respond to emerging immigrant and refugee populations. Such expansion gains relevance as the nation grows more diverse and continues to rely on FQHCs to respond to the health needs of medically underserved populations.