On January 25th, approximately 26 UW School of Medicine students volunteered their time at the Tet in Seattle Health Fair, a collaborative event between the Student Health Initiative for Access and the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association.
Tet or Lunar New Year is one of the largest holidays in the Vietnamese community, through this event, the students were able to provide localized access and educate the patient population on the importance of blood pressure, blood glucose, and A1C as it pertains to higher risk diabetics.
With any non-native English population, patients can face barriers due to language barriers, lower health literacy, or proper access to healthcare resources. The students were able to help both English and Vietnamese-speaking populations at this event.
Alongside the help of their preceptors, the students were able to screen approximately 90 patients for blood glucose and blood pressure and 12 patients for A1C and blood pressure.