By Claudia Todd-Young
[1]- Lions Club members prepare for registration. With three times as many registration stations, the lack of preregistration did not slow things down.
Approximately 400 people received free and low-cost health screenings this past Saturday at the 9Health Fair at Berthoud High School. While it doesn’t take a village to provide these services, it does take volunteers from throughout northern Colorado. Over 75 volunteers made this year’s 9Health Fair a reality for those 400 people.
This year was the first time the Berthoud 9Health Fair site was able to offer a chauffeured golf-cart ride to the front door of the high school for those participants who needed the extra assistance.
Medical and non-medical volunteers allowed us to offer previously-unavailable services to our community. New this year to the Berthoud site were the Aspen Club [2] from Poudre Valley Hospital, providing bone density screenings at no charge and the Women’s Wellness Connection providing women’s cancer education.
This also marked the first year that 9Health Fair has utilized chiropractic screenings. Local chiropractor Dr. Luke Bishop provided spinal screening and education at the spinal health station.
The standard screenings were also offered to participants who could do “one-stop medical screenings” if they so desired. Local dentist Dr. Carmen Beckwith provided oral screenings, Dr.Ross Armour provided prostate exams, Dr. Chad Knutson performed foot screenings, WalMart provided vision screenings, Larimer County Mental Health [3] offered help for stress identification and management, Curves provided body mass index screening and more than 25 medical professionals provided blood pressure and blood draw services.
For every medical volunteer, there were at least two non-medical volunteers who helped direct traffic throughout the school or assisted in other ways. The Berthoud Lions ladies who weren’t involved in the health screening areas provided nourishment for the volunteers, many of whom had arrived at the school at 5:30 a.m. The volunteers were particularly thankful this year to Serenity Massage for providing chair massages to volunteers during their breaks.
Thanks to community commitment and involvement, Berthoud was once again able to participate in the 9Health Fair to offer services that many would not other wise receive.
Thanks to everyone who participated this year as either a participant or a volunteer. In the words of one of our first-year volunteers, “Boy, all anyone has to do is try volunteering for this once and they’ll never give it up. What a great feeling.”
Photos by Gary Wamsley
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