Asian Community Development Council Strengthens Access to Services for the AAPI Community With Sands Cares Support
With a capacity-building investment from Sands Cares, the Asian Community Development Council (ACDC) has created a series of events, awareness programs and engagement initiatives to increase access to medical and social services among Southern Nevada’s diverse Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.
Announced in mid-2023, the latest round of Sands Cares funding for ACDC continued support for the Healthy Asians and Pacific Islanders (HAPI) Medical Center and the API Language Link, which provide critical in-language health and social services to the Southern Nevada AAPI community.
Since that time, ACDC has used the Sands Cares investment to create a series of community health and wellness events to boost awareness of the medical center’s services and drive visits. ACDC co-hosted more than 40 events that delivered health screenings, wellness information and 2,000 vaccines to 1,500 clients.
The nonprofit planned events at venues trusted by the Southern Nevada AAPI community, including grocery stores, the Uu Dam Pagoda Vietnamese Temple, Northern Nevada Muslim Community Center and the Martin Luther King Jr. Senior Center. Medical center staff and care providers communicated with attendees in their preferred languages to explain services available to them.
According to ACDC, health and wellness events at these locations have been a successful strategy, driving more than 250 patients in 2023 to seek care at the HAPI Medical Center – in the language with which they feel most comfortable.
ACDC also has pursued expansion of its API Language Link with Sands Cares funding. In 2021, Sands enabled ACDC to launch the language service, which connects Southern Nevada AAPI community members to a variety of social services. With Sands Cares’ most recent investment, ACDC has expanded the language link to include nine language specialists who can provide support in 10 languages.
The API Language Link connects community members to health care services at the HAPI Medical Center and ACDC’s other direct service locations, including a culturally sensitive food distribution warehouse in Las Vegas and a second community resource center in Reno, Nevada.
ACDC followed a strategy similar to the health and wellness community engagement series to expand its food outreach efforts by planning a series of pop-up events in trusted places where the organization provided food staples and supplies. Venues included the Buddhaya Nandharam Temple, the Wat Buddhica Khmer Temple, the Diwali Food Distribution and a partnership with the Filipino American Educators of Nevada (FAME) for a holiday food distribution event.
API Language Link staff were on site at the pop-up events to educate about the array of services ACDC offers. Through the food outreach series, the nonprofit provided nearly 2,500 families and nearly 6,000 individuals with food supplies.
“Sands Cares has made it possible for us to pursue a robust slate of events in the places where our community members feel most comfortable so we can further establish the HAPI Medical Center and the API Language Link as trusted resources for our communities,” Vida Lin, founder and president of ACDC, said. “We are grateful that Sands understands the need for in-language services to increase access to critical resources. The Sands Cares support we received has helped ensure we reach as many people as possible with the broad array of services we provide.”
ACDC’s mission is to improve the overall well-being of AAPI communities through initiatives spanning food assistance, voter registration, health insurance support, pathways to citizenship and health care. Since 2021, Sands has provided $425,000 to support this mission through the HAPI Medical Center and API Language Link.
The company’s partnership with ACDC is representative of Sands Cares’ focus on providing hardship relief and enabling underserved groups, including diverse communities, to overcome barriers and gain access to critical and empowering services.
To learn more about Sands’ community engagement initiatives, read the company’s latest ESG report: https://www.sands.com/2022-environmental-social-and-governance-report/
