September 17, 2018
COMMUNITY
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 11
Asian Community Health Fair celebrates 17th year
By Kelly La Croix
The Asian Reporter
he 17th annual Asian Community
Health Fair was held last month at
the Asian Health & Service Center
(AHSC). The annual event offers free
health screenings and services to all
attendees. This year’s fair was the first to
take place at the center’s new location at
9035 S.E. Foster Road, and as in the past,
it attracted a large crowd. In recent years,
as many as 1,500 people have attended,
with more than 350 community partners
involved, including health professionals,
multilingual volunteers, and sponsors.
The health fair offered a wide array of
services, from screening and testing for
diseases such as lung cancer and diabetes
to booths that measured participants’ body
mass index, blood pressure, and blood
glucose levels. Other services included
respiratory examinations, hearing and
lead tests, mental-health information and
screening, naturopathic consultation,
osteopathic manipulation medicine, a
station for women’s health, stroke preven-
tion, and a mobile truck featuring dental
screening and hygiene care. Vision and
glaucoma screenings, also considered part
of the health fair, were held a week prior.
In addition to stations focused on
physical and behavioral healthcare, the
event also included 18 booths. Some
handed out information about AHSC and
its various programs, ranging from its
mental-health resources to its health
education classes. Other stations focused
on community care or featured the health
fair’s sponsors, including REACH Com-
munity Development (an organization
whose focus is on affordable housing and
property management), the Korean
American Health Professionals Alliance (a
nonprofit promoting Asian and Pacific
Islanders to pursue careers in healthcare),
Health Share of Oregon (a coordinated
care organization serving Oregon Health
Plan members), Aging and Disability
Resource Connection (which provides
information about services related to
aging and disability needs), the Oregon
Department of Consumer and Business
Services, Multnomah County Mental
Health and Addiction Services, the
Rosewood Family Health Center, and
CareOregon, among others.
One new feature of this year’s event was
the demonstration kitchen, where
participants were shown how to prepare
regional dishes in ways that promoted
health. AHSC founder and chairman of the
board Dr. Erik Szeto remarked that
patients who require a low-cholesterol
diet, for example, can now be taught to
utilize ingredients and techniques tailored
to their medical needs in a way that is
culturally relevant.
As having a kitchen that prepares
regional food demonstrates, the Asian
Community Health Fair sets itself apart
from other similar functions by making an
effort to provide care that is culturally
specific. Another way it effectively serves
the needs of the community is by
populating the event with multilingual
volunteers. Executive director and CEO
Holden Leung estimated that 150
bilingual and trilingual volunteers took
part in the event. To make themselves
easily identifiable, they wore colored
lanyards denoting the languages they
were fluent in, including Mandarin,
T
Cantonese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
“This health fair is very culturally
tailored to the clients’ needs,” said Leung,
“Healthcare should be for everyone, even if
they don’t speak English well.”
He went on to note that not only were
there multilingual volunteers, many of the
medical providers themselves were bilin-
gual or from the community they serve.
This, he believes, helps bring providers
and clients together. It also helps to reduce
the potential for confusion when dealing
with language barriers.
Dr. Szeto added that AHSC offers
services that are not only culturally
tailored to its clients, but also culturally
sensitive. He explained that in some
communities, particularly close-knit ones,
a client may not want to talk to an
interpreter about mental-health problems
or other sensitive issues because of the
stigma attached. Speaking directly to a
doctor who shares the same language can
help ease patients’ minds.
Understanding that the complexity of a
culturally sensitive approach can be
difficult to comprehend, Leung shared a
concrete example of how the organization
was able to profoundly help a visitor:
during last year’s vision screening, a
patient was found to have a hole in their
retina.
“If we didn’t find it at that moment, that
patient may be blind today,” he reflected,
“At a health fair, maybe we touch 1,000
lives; we may be able to save a few.”
AHSC has been serving the needs of the
Portland metropolitan region’s Asian
communities since its founding in 1983.
The nonprofit’s aim is to act as a bridge
between Asian and American cultures by
reducing health inequity and improving
healthcare quality for all Asians. In
addition to its annual health fair, the
organization
hosts
talks,
classes,
workshops, clinics, clubs, wellness groups,
outreach programs, and a senior lunch
program. It also operates both the Yu Miao
Chinese Immersion Preschool and the
Chinese Medicine Clinic (the latter in
partnership with the National University
COMMUNITY HEALTH. The 17th annual Asian
Community Health Fair was held last month at the
Asian Health & Service Center (AHSC). The annual
event offers free health screenings and services (bot-
tom photos) to all attendees. Pictured in the top photo
are AHSC staff, health professionals, volunteers, and
community partners gathered in front of the center’s
new location at 9035 S.E. Foster Road. The 2018
health fair was the first one held at the new building.
(Photos/Brian Lau, courtesy of the Asian Health &
Service Center)
of Natural Medicine), among many other
diverse programs.
To learn more, call (503) 872-8822,
e-mail <info@ahscpdx.org>, or visit <www.
ahscpdx.org>.