Hundreds of medical professionals, language interpreters and community organizers joined forces on Saturday to provide free care and resources for the 16th annual Frederick Community Health Fair at Frederick High School.
The fair was sponsored by the Asian American Center of Frederick and Frederick Health Hospital. Seventy-two groups, including Frederick County government agencies, nonprofit organizations, businesses and the U.S. Public Health service, attended.
According to TJ Sydykov, AACF’s director of operations, more than 3,000 people pre-registered to receive medical services on Saturday.
People who attended the health fair could take advantage of a laundry list of services including vaccinations, testing for hepatitis and HIV, eye exams, dental check-ups, breast exams and screenings for blood glucose and diabetes.
No insurance or proof of residence is required to access care at the community health fair. Individuals who receive a new diagnosis at the event are referred to a provider in the community who can help treat or manage their condition.
In addition to medical services, fair organizers helped distribute hundreds of pre-packed grocery bags, Covid tests, masks and other necessities to visitors.
Members of Hope 4 Our Children set up an activity center featuring face painting, henna tattoos and balloon animals for kids who accompanied their parents to the fair. Other groups held informational sessions in classrooms.
Sydykov said roughly half of the people who pre-registered for the event requested Spanish-language services, which “really shows the need for a diversity of health care workers in Frederick County.”
To meet that need, organizers also recruited speakers of Dari, Pashto, Russian, Ukrainian, Hindi, Gujarati, Burmese, French, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Vietnamese, Urdu, Thai, and American Sign Language to help translate.
Bryan Morales said he was initially drawn to the community health fair because he knows a lot of people who need medical services, but aren’t able to access them because they do not speak English or have adequate health insurance.
“It’s amazing to see that there’s so many barriers being broken down,” Morales said. “You can tell there’s a lot of people in the Frederick community that are super helpful.”
Morales appreciated that many of the fair’s providers offered literature in different languages, giving people a chance to read about health topics at their own pace. He said he plans to volunteer at the next community health fair.
Darlene Burns, a nursing student at Frederick Community College who volunteered at the fair, was responsible for taking patients’ vitals and recording their concerns before sending them on to a doctor or physician’s assistant.
“You don’t realize until you get in here that the demand for services is wild in Frederick,” Burns said. “People will come in here with tooth abscesses or pain that they’ve had for years, but they can’t get this kind of help anywhere else.”
