When the African Leadership Group’s former partner in providing annual health fairs stopped offering that service, it would have been easy to decide that future fairs wouldn’t be possible.
But that’s not how ALG operates. If the community needs health services, then ALG will find a way to provide them.
As a result, ALG hosted its own health fair on Nov. 4 at the ALG headquarters in Aurora.
Thanks to several indispensable community partners like Walgreens, the Inner City Health Center, Quest Diagnostics, and UCHealth, we were able to provide free flu vaccines to 95 people, and blood screenings to another 86 people who might not otherwise have access to such services, as well as immunizations and consultations.
Inner City Health also provided free health assessments, including blood pressure screenings, height, weight and body mass index (BMI) screening, stress management screening, diabetes risk assessment, and colon cancer education.
Dr. Adetola Obiwole of UCHealth, herself an immigrant from Nigeria, helped coordinate the health fair. She brought a group of students with her to help with vaccines.
Having coordinated and participated in many health fairs over the years, Dr. Adetola said the ALG health fair earlier this month stood out as among the she has seen.
“The coordination of this event was so well handled by ALG,” she said. “From the signups to the outreach, they were able to reach those segments of the community that really needed these services. That was very impressive to me.”
ALG also coordinated the participation of a large number of partner organizations. Here is the full list:
- Quest Diagnostics
- Mile High Internal Medicine:
- All Of Us Research Program
- YMCA of Metropolitan Denver (spoke about diabetes risk and prediabetic screenings)
- U.S. Health Stroke Awareness Team
- Alcoholics Anonymous
- Oak St. Health
- Elevation Hospice of Colorado
- Village Exchange Center
- Banner Health
- Nar-Anon
- Inner City Health
- Walgreens
- Connect 4 Health
Now that ALG has run its own health fair successfully, and formed such strong partnerships, it’s likely to become an annual event.
