Healthy Women Healthy Lives

I arrived in Cincinnati for my capstone experience about five weeks ago and quickly learned about the program, Healthy Women Healthy Lives. This program helps impoverished women of African American, Appalachian, or Hispanic decent in Cincinnati by providing free health screenings to those who do not have health insurance. The screening events include self breast exam education, BMI and blood pressure readings, heart health screenings, osteoporosis screenings, and mammograms. So far, the work I have done has been very rewarding. Most of my day goes into preparing for upcoming screening events. I make calls to women to gather information and schedule them for mammograms, travel to the communities and handout fliers about the screening events, prepare incentive gift bags, put together patient files, and more. 
This past weekend I worked at my second health screening event in Madisonville, Cincinnati. My wonderful partner Elizabeth and I arrived at the site at around 6am to set up for the event and two hours later the women began to arrive for their mammogram appointments and other screenings. I spent the first half of the event teaching women how to perform a self breast exam and then switched roles with Elizabeth who was reviewing the women's screening results and educating them about ways to improve their cholesterol, blood pressure, nutrition, etc. By 4 pm we had packed everything up and were ready to leave. It was a very long day and I was exhausted, but all of the women were so appreciative and grateful and it made me feel that our work had a positive impact on their lives.