Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

Community Health Fairs: Time for a redesign?

¹Community Health Center, Inc., New Britain, CT, USA

²University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

³Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Douglas P Olson, MD
Community Health Center
Inc. 85 Lafayette Street
New Britain, CT 06051, USA
Tel: 860.224.3642 x 5102
Fax: 860.224.2760
E-mail: OlsonD@chc1.com

Received date: January 03, 2012; Accepted date: February 13, 2012; Published date: February 15, 2012

Citation: Olson DP, Fields BG, Huot SJ, Windish DM (2012) Community Health Fairs: Time for a redesign? J Community Med Health Edu 2:123. doi:10.4172/jcmhe.1000123

Copyright: © 2012 Olson DP, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Purpose: Community health fairs are an important part of public health yet little data exist that provide information as to why people attend.

Methods: This cross sectional study surveyed attendees at a health fair conducted in an urban, underserved community to determine attendees’ reasons for attending the event. The responses were coupled with results of screening tests.

Results: 228 attendees were surveyed, and nearly half (47%) of participants stated they came to the health fair for information or education; only 18% came for a diagnostic test or an examination. There were 71 attendees with a blood pressure greater than 140/90 mmHg, and 18 (25%) did not have a known diagnosis of hypertension. There were no new diagnoses of diabetes or HIV.

Conclusions: Nearly half of the people who attended this community health fair came for education and health information, and a minority came for a screening test or exam.