Surveys and Health Fairs: Attempting to understand the needs of the community

Common Ground Health Clinic - January 25, 2013 - 2 hours

Common Ground Health Clinic - January 30, 2013 - 4 hours



 

In the last week I've started volunteering with the Common Ground Health Clinic. On January 25th, I went over to Algiers to help out at the clinic office. CGHC is currently in the process of conducting a community survey to figure out what the needs of the community members are. Questions range from how frequently an individual receives healthcare services (and where) to how and where they buy their groceries. The six page survey will hopefully lead to more events and services (put on by CGHC in collaboration with different New Orleans non-profits) that can better serve patients.

 

Luckily CGHC hosted two volunteer days (on MLK day and on Saturday the 26th) where large groups of volunteers from Tulane and the city came out to conduct the surveys in mass. Therefore on Friday, I was set to putting together some more volunteer packets for the following volunteer day. After finishing with that simple task, Desiree asked me to start translating that same survey into Spanish. I was informed that the group that is most underserved in the community, in terms of healthcare, is the Latino community. This is in part due to the fact that there are limited resources in Spanish and personnel who can communicate effectively in Spanish as well.

 

Translating the survey is definitely the first real writing I have done in Spanish since I graduated from UW-Madison last May. I'm excited to get to use my Spanish more frequently, and I hope to brush up on it so that I can be of more use in that way. The CGHC is restarting their free Latino Health Outreach Project (LHOP), and I would love to work with them. LHOP is a free clinic service that operates out of a trailer in downtown New Orleans on Friday mornings. Most of the patients there are Latino workers who don't have access to services on a regular basis.

 

It was a good first experience working with CGHC. Desiree and I left at the same time, but unfortunately the bus we were anticipating taking broke down. It did, however, provide a great opportunity to walk through Algiers to the river to take the free ferry across. It was a beautiful day and a unique way to get around New Orleans. I definitely found some cute restaurants and shops in Algiers that I want to check out in the near-future!

 

 

 

Xavier Convention
Center

This past Wednesday I also volunteered with CGHC at a Health Fair at Xavier University. Health fairs are a common occurrence in New Orleans which is a very new experience for me. Although students at UW-Madison put on a lot of conferences and symposiums for pre-healthcare students to explore their career interests and learn about healthcare disparities, actual health fairs for the community were non-existent. So I was excited to learn that I would be helping with tabling at this health fair. I arrived around 2pm and things were moving fairly slowly. About 60 organizations were set up with tables: the majority of them are involved in providing resources to the uninsured and underserved in New Orleans. Desiree and Colleen (another CGHC staff member) run outreach at CGHC and so they knew a lot of the people who were there working outreach booths for different organizations. In addition to these organizations, there were two sets of patient booths set up along the walls of the room. Tulane, LSU and other physicians and medical students were running these booths to provide free health screenings and HIV testing.

Tulane Physicians and Med Students

People came and went, but overall it was a fairly slow event. The biggest hit at our table was the new Resource Guide that CGHC has compiled. This guide provides information on every type of resource related to health and wellness that the un/under -insured can utilize in the city. A lot of the other organizations' leaders and healthcare providers stopped by to take a few to put in their offices and waiting rooms.

Colleen (far) and Desiree
at our table

Because there was so much down time, I talked to Desiree and Colleen about the function and success of these various health fairs. I got the sense that community non-profits can do a better job of consolidating these events and advertising for them in a more successful manner. Both of them expressed a little distress at the prevalence of these events, and yet the seemingly vague goal of them. Ideally members of the community should come out to receive information on healthcare resources and to get excited about living in a more healthy manner, but this isn't always achieved.  

Xavier Pharmacy students



I think between the surveys and the health fairs, the surveys provide a greater, more tangible result. On a community level (in Algiers especially) CGHC has a wonderfully positive role because they can do something real for the community members. Although the health fair was a great way to have community organizations meet up and discuss needs/events, it didn't seem to reach its own goal of engaging the community. It was definitely a valuable experience, though, to see who is working for the same goals in this city and to feel the energy in the room.