Measuring LA County Human Development Index

We are at the launch of the Portrait of LA 2026 report. My name is Kaen Gilbert. My role here with the County of Los Angeles Department of Mental Health is as the behavioral health services act coordinator. This is really exciting because this report is such valuable tool not only to us here in the department of mental health but to philanthropists, other county departments, community agencies. This report really shows the disparities within and among our communities and looks very specifically at the human development index. Hi, I'm Kristen Lewis. I'm the director and co-founder of Measure of America, which is project of the Social Science Research Council. Portrait of Los Angeles County 2026 is report that explores the well-being of different groups of Angelinos by place and by demographic group. We have the human development index which contains indicators on health, education and income and puts them together on single scale from 0 to 10. LA County as whole scores 5.64 out of 10 on the index. But where that becomes meaningful is when you look at the scores of different racial and ethnic groups, different parts of the county to see which places are surging ahead, which ones are falling behind. Some groups of Angelinos have some of the highest levels of well-being in the country if not in the world whereas others are really struggling with the basics. This in turn helps us with our community planning. This helps us understand where the greatest needs are when we start to develop new programming. This is what equity is about. Putting our resources where there is the greatest need. And that's why think this is such an important report. One other thing that think is really cool is that they included data walks with the community where we literally were able to take in community voice to help us better understand the numbers that we're seeing on the page. You should be able to go into the portal and see and hear variety of LA County voices on topics that range from health to cost of living to school and education needs. The kinds of inequalities we see in Los Angeles County are not natural. They're not inevitable. They're the result of deliberate policy choices made over decades that advantage certain groups of Angelinos and excluded other groups of Angelinos. Different, better policies can create different, better, fairer, more just Los Angeles. One in which everybody has chance not just to survive, but to thrive.