The public is invited to visit Dent County Health Center for the facility’s first Health Fair and Open House event from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on April 13. The clinic will be providing free and reduced-cost screenings and health services with no appointments necessary.
“We moved into this building in February of 2020. In March, COVID hit, so we never got to have an open house,” said assistant administrator Roma Jones. “Doing the health screenings is important, but I’m excited just to get to have an open house too, because we haven’t gotten to do that yet.”
DCHC Nurse Practitioner April Greener said a variety of screenings and services will be available at the event.
“We have a lot of screenings. Height, weight, blood pressure management. We’re going to do basic vision screenings. As part of our heart-healthy screening, we’re going to include lab work with that, which includes an A1C, which is the gold standard for diagnosis of diabetes,” said Greener. “There’s also a lipid panel, which is cholesterol screening, and then of course we have our add-on labs.”
Basic screenings are free and include blood pressure, height and weight, and BMI calculation.
Rapid Heart Healthy screenings will be $19.50, and will include a basic screening, a lipid panel to test cholesterol, and an A1C test. Add-on screenings include blood chemistry ($3.80), basic thyroid ($3.50,) Vitamin D ($13.75), and blood counts ($3.00).
Other services include rapid blood lead screening for $10, free vision screenings, STI testing, and free information and scheduling for other services. Immunizations will be available as well, according to staff.
The clinic will also be distributing Narcan free of charge to those who need it. Narcan is a medication used to reverse or reduce the effects of opioids. It is often administered in response to drug overdoses, but clinic staff says it’s not just used to help in drug abuse situations, but also for anyone in a situation where opioids may be taken accidentally or by the wrong person, such as a child accidentally taking their grandparent’s medication.
“Anybody can have it. The people that need it the most are not law enforcement. They need it too, but it’s really friends and family of people who may be at risk for drug overdose, they need it in their hands. They’re going to be the first people to most likely respond,” said Greener.
Greener said the clinic will be offering a car seat service as well.
“(We will be) checking placement of existing car seats, and we also have a program that helps people who qualify get a free car seat. We have a safe cribs program too, we can help them get involved with that,” said Greener.
“We’re going to have a booth for WIC (Women, Infant and Children nutrition program),” said Jones. “We will have a booth representing birth to age five, pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding women.”
The clinic will share information for Show Me Healthy Women, a state program that provides free cervical and breast cancer screenings to those who qualify. Starting April 3, the clinic will be a Title X clinic, providing family planning services, according to Greener.
“We will also have a little setup for Building Communities for Better Health, a program we’re working on here. It’s really focused right now on active transportation and being smoke free. The biggest thing is we’re looking into getting a smoke-free ordinance for the City of Salem,” said the project manager Janelle Moore.
The clinic will have a raffle for completing a survey, according to staff.
“We’re asking people to do a survey. Really the survey is just asking ‘what hardships do you see in the community, what do you like about the community, what do you dislike, what kind of improvements can we make’. It’s not really centered on smoke-free or active transportation,” said Moore.
Greener says the open house is an opportunity to show the community what the clinic has to offer.
“I think a lot of people don’t even know what the health center offers. So one, we want to just have an open house to share what we do here with people, to make them aware of the services we offer. And then two, to ensure that the community knows that the health center is for everyone. There has been a perception that it’s only for people who don’t have insurance, or maybe people who have financial concerns,” said Greener.
“I think our mission statement says it best: Improve and protect the health of the residents of Dent County. I think that kind of wraps up why we’re here,” said Moore.
No appointments or lab orders will be needed for the services offered. The clinic will accept cash only the day of the open house. The Dent County Health Center is located at 1010 E. Scenic Rivers Blvd. in Salem.
