Pic above is MD/PhD student Edward Cheng taking the blood pressure of someone at a health fairJames Kuo
August 2009
Summer Blood Pressure Screenings with ICHS Writeup
Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association - UW Chapter
E-mail sent outAsian Pacific American Medical Student Association - UW Chapter
Introduction and Purpose
International Community Health Services (ICHS - www.ichs.com) is a community health center in located in Seattle's International District that focuses on providing care for underserved immigrants and refugees in the Asian Pacific American (APA) community. We created this program to help meet some needs for both ICHS and medical students:
-Get more medical students involved with an APA focused community health center.
-Allow medical students to learn more about community health in Seattle
-Allow medical students to work on a basic clinical skill (taking blood pressures in a loud street fair)
-Provide basic screening and health education for underserved populations
First year medical students learn how to take BPs in the spring and most will have bought equipment to do so by then.
Methods and Materials
Coordinating with ICHS
The Community Advocacy Coordinator, Abbie Zahler, and the Volunteer Coordinator, Michelle Mallari, were the key contacts. They provided the schedule of events where students could help out and walked each volunteer through the required paperwork.
Getting the word out
The APAMSA, AFERM, MD1, and MD2 mailing lists were e-mailed with information about the program (see appendix for e-mail)
Setting up a spreadsheet
A Google spreadsheet was set up to keep track of volunteers and events. (http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rcFHoVmVlVfF5wp1RZJIy-Q)
Logistics
Students brought their own BP equipment and provided their own transportation.
Results
There was at least one volunteer for most of the events. I did it once and feel like I am better and more comfortable at taking blood pressures now that I have done it on around 20 people at the street fair that I volunteered at.
Conclusion / Recommendations for Next Time
Ideas for the future-
Appendix
Contacts
Abbie Zahler, Community Advocacy Coordinator - abbiez; domain for e-mail is ichs.com
Michelle Mallari, Volunteer Coordinator - michellem; same domain
International Community Health Services (ICHS - www.ichs.com) is a community health center in located in Seattle's International District that focuses on providing care for underserved immigrants and refugees in the Asian Pacific American (APA) community. We created this program to help meet some needs for both ICHS and medical students:
-Get more medical students involved with an APA focused community health center.
-Allow medical students to learn more about community health in Seattle
-Allow medical students to work on a basic clinical skill (taking blood pressures in a loud street fair)
-Provide basic screening and health education for underserved populations
First year medical students learn how to take BPs in the spring and most will have bought equipment to do so by then.
Methods and Materials
Coordinating with ICHS
The Community Advocacy Coordinator, Abbie Zahler, and the Volunteer Coordinator, Michelle Mallari, were the key contacts. They provided the schedule of events where students could help out and walked each volunteer through the required paperwork.
Getting the word out
The APAMSA, AFERM, MD1, and MD2 mailing lists were e-mailed with information about the program (see appendix for e-mail)
Setting up a spreadsheet
A Google spreadsheet was set up to keep track of volunteers and events. (http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rcFHoVmVlVfF5wp1RZJIy-Q)
Logistics
Students brought their own BP equipment and provided their own transportation.
Results
There was at least one volunteer for most of the events. I did it once and feel like I am better and more comfortable at taking blood pressures now that I have done it on around 20 people at the street fair that I volunteered at.
Conclusion / Recommendations for Next Time
Ideas for the future-
- Informal follow up with those that participated so can improve next time
- Talk to SPARX and get them to give SPARX points for volunteers
- Recommending to participants to read up on hypertension beforehand
Appendix
Contacts
Abbie Zahler, Community Advocacy Coordinator - abbiez; domain for e-mail is ichs.com
Michelle Mallari, Volunteer Coordinator - michellem; same domain
Hi,
APAMSA has collaborated with International Community Health Services (ICHS), the main community health center in the Seattle area that focuses on underserved API populations, to create a project where medical students accompany ICHS outreach workers to health fairs and community fairs to help with blood pressure screenings. ICHS also has snazzy multilingual materials that talk about hypertension (and other chronic diseases) and how to prevent and treat it so you can hand these out to the person after you screen them as well if they have high blood pressure.
The following link can take you to a list of events and times. It will be updated regularly so you can see what events and times are still available.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rcFHoVmVlVfF5wp1RZJIy-Q
Reasons to participate:
-Work on a basic clinical skill. You'll get much better taking BPs
practicing in a loud health fair.
-Provide basic screening and health education for underserved populations.
-Learn more about community health in Seattle.
If you are interested in volunteering, please e-mail me and let me know:
-Name of event (of course)
-Your cell phone number
-Time of availability
-Any language skills you possess
You will also have to fill out a short volunteer app at http://www.ichs.com/pdfs/VolunteerApplication.pdf and stop by their office in the International District for some more paperwork. You would also bring your own BP cuff and stethoscope to the health fair.
Please let me know if you have any questions. Have a great day!
James
