Students from the USC PA program conducted a health fair on October 1, 2011, at the Barrio Action Youth and Family Center in El Sereno, one of many underserved surrounding communities. They named this event the "ProActive Health" Fair to reflect their desire to promote preventative medical care and the PA profession in light of the upcoming PA Week, Oct 6-12. This was the first interdisciplinary health fair of its kind for the PA program involving, not only students from the USC Primary Care Physician Assistant program, but also students from the USC Schools of Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Occupational Therapy.
Determined to offer as many free services to this uninsured Latin-American community, our students secured enough free flu shots from the County of Los Angeles to vaccinate over 100 people. Together with students from the other graduate programs within USC and Keck, they also provided free glucose tests, visual acuity tests, blood pressure screenings, diabetic foot checks, and numerous educational booths. Impressively, services were offered in both English and Spanish by students from different medical professions working side-by-side as a team, or even better, as part of the same Trojan family.
The program would like to recognize the following student leaders from the Class of 2013 who made this event a success: Sara Coburn, Kimberly Ely, Jessica Lee, Kristina Lynch, Ali Marcus, Diana Nguyen, Isabelle Pamart-Tran, Victoria Pittman, and Jiami Zhang Uy. These students comprise USC’s student chapter of the national PA organization (AAPA). We would also like to express our appreciation to the students from our Trojan family in the schools of Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Occupational Medicine who helped make this event a success. Go Trojans!