Bridgeport health fair offers education, outreach
Amanda Cuda, Staff Writer CT Post
Published: 09:51 p.m., Wednesday, April 7, 2010
BRIDGEPORT -- Heaven Gruel needs help.
The 37-year-old Bridgeport resident has been out of work for roughly
a year and a half, and there's nary a facet of her life with which
she didn't need assistance. She even found herself largely without
a wardrobe after most of her clothes were stolen recently while she
was doing laundry. Gruel is also, like 50 million Americans, without
health insurance. And, despite the recent passage of a federal health
care reform bill that will eventually extend coverage to 32 million
of the nation's uninsured, Gruel still has the here and now to worry
about.
Without insurance, Gruel can't afford preventative care, like physicals
and other health screenings. That can be scary, she said. "When you don't have any
insurance, you sit back and suffer," she said.
Given her situation, Gruel has had to find alternative avenues through
which to take care of herself -- like local health fairs. On Wednesday,
she attended her second health fair in a month, at Housatonic Community
College. The school was hosting the 7th annual Community Health Fair,
sponsored by HCC and the Bridgeport Health Department. The fair, which
had the theme "A Healthier America: One
Community at a Time," featured more than 50 vendors, including Bridgeport
Hospital , St. Vincent's Medical Center and Southwest Community
Health Center. Vendors were offering everything from information on
services to free health screenings.
Gruel said she was taking the opportunity to visit every booth she
could and learn about as many services as possible. She also took advantage
of the booths offering such screenings as blood pressure tests.
She said she's only recently learned that health fairs are a great
way to help fill in the gaps in care faced by many people without insurance.
Gruel also has gotten referrals to other services through health fairs,
including the local Community Closet, which helped her find clothes
to replace the ones that were stolen. In her view, one of the greatest
benefits that fairs like this provide is education about the resources
available to people in the community. "A
lot of these services -- we don't know they exist," Gruel said.
The fair ran from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and, shortly before noon, it had
already received about 500 visitors, said Linda Griffin, health services
coordinator at HCC. Griffin said roughly 1,000 people visit the fair
annually, and this year's fair was on track to be an average one.
One major change that she'd noticed from previous years was that more
students were attending the fair. She said there could be a variety
of reasons for the bump in student traffic, including increased promotion
of the fair, and increased student awareness of health issues. Griffin
said it's also possible that there's greater need in the student community.
"Many of the students are uninsured or underinsured," she said. Suzanne
Standish, Bridgeport Hospital manager of cardiac rehabilitation, agreed the fair
was a venue for people who might not have a lot of health care options. "It's
free and, especially in this type of setting, you get a lot of uninsured," said
Standish, who was doing blood cholesterol tests at the fair. "The
students here aren't as young (as they are at other schools)."
Not all who attended the health fair were in as bad a way as Gruel.
In fact, most of those interviewed at the fair Wednesday afternoon
said they had medical coverage. But, many of them agreed that you can
never learn too much about taking care of yourself.
Shirley Johansson, 63, of Bridgeport, is an HCC student and decided
to check out the fair, even though she has insurance and access to
health care. She said she'd visited more of the booths, and loved learning
about all the services available to people.
"It raises your awareness," Johansson said. "It shows that if
you need help, you can get it."
Anson C. Smith, Public Relations Coordinator
Housatonic Community College
900 Lafayette Blvd.
Bridgeport, CT 06604
Tel: 203-332-5229, Fax: 203-332-5247
E-mail: asmith@hcc.commnet.edu