Attendees began lining up hours before the UT Physicians Multispecialty – Jensen clinic opened for the third annual UTHealthCares free health fair community event on Jan. 25.
“The UTHealthCares event hosted at our Jensen clinic serves multiple important purposes. On one hand, it helps facilitate community engagement of future health care leaders in underserved communities. On the other hand, it tackles the need to strengthen health education as a fundamental building block to overall health and wellness through preventative services,” said Marlon Stewart, Jensen clinic practice manager.
Students from all six schools at UTHealth were on-site to aid in screenings for vision, blood pressure, blood sugar level, dental and overall health challenges. In addition, the students also ran a teddy bear clinic, giving mock exams to children’s teddy bears to ease their own worry about seeing a doctor.
This year, approximately 180 health screenings were administered. Along with the screenings, attendees were able to take home important health and wellness educational materials. In collaboration with the Houston Food Bank, 150 attendees received complimentary boxes filled with fresh and healthy food choices.
“We had an extremely successful event with 100 student volunteers from all six of our schools. UTHealthCares is a student-driven interprofessional collaborative designed to uniquely address the health concerns of Houston’s underserved populations through substantive community engagement. This was our third year hosting this event and it gets better every year. Our students continue to amaze me,” said LaTanya Love, MD, the project’s faculty advisor and associate dean for admissions and student affairs at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.
