LYNWOOD — About 100 women turned out for the L.A. Care Health Plan’s Family Resource Center’s Women’s Health Month celebration last week, for free mini-massages, health screenings and an earful of Mother Love’s inspiring words.

And on Thursday the family resource center will be busy again, administering 300 free flu shots between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. in order to receive its share of the H1N1 flu vaccine from the county, which is arriving this week.

The vaccine will be arriving throughout the state in batches, not all at once, making individuals who know about L.A. Care and the resources it provides to the community all the more fortunate.

The problem is that not enough people know about the resource center and what it has to offer. But the nonprofit resource center is slowly gaining momentum, along with its sister center in Inglewood.

L.A. Care Health Plan is the largest public health plan in the region, having recruited 800,000 members since its inception. Within a five-mile radius of the Lynwood office, the agency serves more than 100,000 members. Another 100,000 L.A. Care members also live within five miles of the Inglewood office.

Both facilities offer a variety of free classes on nutrition and exercise, Pilates, salsa dance aerobics and line-dancing. Walk-in patients also are welcome for classes in cooking nutritionally, chronic disease management program, breast and cervical health classes, self-esteem, domestic violence and postpartum depression support groups among many others designed to help women stay healthy.

A local initiative health authority of Los Angeles County, L.A. Care is a public entity and community-accountable health plan that serves L.A. residents through Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, L.A. Care’s Healthy Kids and L.A. Care’s Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plan.

The Women’s Health Month celebration, aptly titled “A Morning of Me Time,” which took place Oct. 1, was not just held to help women tune into their health, bodies and minds, but to remind women that their health and “me time” should go beyond the month of October and Mother’s Day.

“Women need to start putting themselves first again,” said Margaret Coins, administrator of the family resource center in Lynwood. “Women have to love themselves … and take care of themselves. Women today are so busy taking care of others, of being moms, wives and holding onto jobs, that they forget to have regular mammographies [and] regular cancer screenings. Women are the primary caretakers in the home. They clean, they’re the chefs, the homework helpers, we do so much that we neglect ourselves.”

If women don’t make the time to pay attention to themselves, it is sometimes too late to catch illnesses in the early stages and stop them from getting worse, Coins said.

Among the many health problems common to cities like Lynwood and Inglewood are high rates of asthma, obesity and diabetes. And the fact that people are losing their jobs and losing their homes to foreclosure means more families also are losing health insurance coverage and joining the millions of Americans who are uninsured, Coins added.

“We are not a health care provider, we are not a clinic, and we do not have any doctors at our centers,” Coins said. “We are a resource center. L.A. Care helps individuals access care, we provide them with resources to find a clinic and the services they need.

“We are a resource and educational center. We want to be partners with the community to help them live healthier lifestyles, so that they can live longer.”

L.A. Care has partnered with other organizations within the community, such as the Watts Health Care Center, St. John’s Well Child and Esperanza Housing, providing a host of physicians readily available to treat L.A. Care’s referrals.

“The biggest obstacle we have is that people don’t know that all of our services are free,” Coins said. “L.A. Care is not just exclusive to our members, or just to women and children. Men are welcome as well for the free health screenings, for the classes and guidance.”

The family resource center can also help families apply for programs such as Medi-Cal and Healthy Families.

“Our duty is to keep as many people in the community as healthy as possible,” Coins said. “Right now we serve from 1,400 to 1,600 people a month, just at the Lynwood office. … Lynwood was the perfect location for us.”

People from as far as Arcadia are members of L.A. Care.

Three women from Culver City attended the Oct. 1 celebration. They came again on Monday to participate in a free nutrition and exercise class.

“Latinos need these types of services,” said Flor Vasquez. “We need one of these in Culver City. … This wasn’t just an exercise class. They talked to us about nutrition and about intoxication and about eating right. It’s a long drive out here, but it’s so worth it. Women who live around here are very lucky to have a resource center like this available to them.”

Sandra Lopez, also of Culver City, sells health products. She said she got in the business because she wants to see her fellow Latinos live longer lives.

“I’m always looking for programs like this for our communities,” said Lopez. “I’m really excited to have found this center. Places like this looking to make a difference in our lives, you don’t find too many of them.”

The Lynwood facility will turn 2 years old on Nov. 13. Coins doesn’t know exactly how the facility will be celebrating that anniversary, but there will be something, she said.

“L.A. Care’s mission is to give the community resources, to give the people access to resources,” she said. “Our communities have faced a lot of obstacles in accessing health care over the years, but now we’re here to be doctor’s partners and to be people’s partners.”

For example, when a doctor prescribes insulin to a person with diabetes, that person may need to learn how to read food labels, or to know what the hemoglobin numbers mean.

“That’s where we come in,” Coins said. “L.A. Care offers a six-week workshop just for that … to teach people about the national guidelines of what their weight should be.”

When it comes down to helping women find “me time,” L.A. Care also has a certified child care facilitator on site so that women with little ones can participate in workshops and exercise classes.

“Education is empowerment,” Coins said. “Our communities care about their health, but it’s not reflected in their eating habits. As we progress more, we can get better educated about our health, thus as a whole, we are going to see people making better choices about what they eat, and be a healthier society.”

Putting women’s health first is L.A. Care’s way of giving women something back.

“Women in our communities will sometimes lack self-esteem and self-respect and for a lot of them life is always about family, but we want to remind them, to take care of themselves, too. Our services are our way of giving women something back for all that they do.”

With the uprooting of health providers happening all over the country over the last couple of years due to the economic crisis, and with the re-opening of the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center on the horizon, L.A. Care, said Coins, has planted its roots deep into the soil at both of its sites.

“We are here to stay,” Coins said. “L.A. Care is very committed not only to its members, but to the communities it serves. L.A. Care does what it says — cares. … One ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Women’s Health Month is the best time to encourage women to start taking care of themselves.

Dr. Elaine Batchlor, chief medical officer at L.A. Care said, “Many of us take care of our family members, our children, our husbands, sometimes other relatives, and neglect our own care,” she said. “But in order to take care of our families, we must also care for ourselves.”

The L.A. Care Family Resource Center is located at 3180 E. Imperial Highway, Lynwood. For more information, call (888) 525-9693 or go to www.lacare.org for a calendar of services, classes and workshops offered.