Friday, October 23, 2009

Lions Health Screening Unit

Ellensburg Lions Club hosted the mobile Lions Health Screening Unit (LHSU) October 16th & 17th.

On Friday, the LHSU was at Cle Elum-Rosyln and Thorp School Districts, doing vision and hearing screenings for school kids. Approximately 200 kids at Cle Elum-Roslyn and 40 at Thorp were screened. Thanks to the school nurses and all the volunteers who helped make the day run as smoothly as possible.

Saturday was our public health screening day. Super 1 Foods gave us a parking space for the unit, right next to the store for high visibility. People started lining up at 8 am (we didn't start until 9:00!)


Lion (and Public Health Nurse) Liz performed the blood sugar test to screen for diabetes. Joey took a break from the registration table to have his sugar levels tested.


Lion Jaela checked visual acuity with the eye chart, and improvised with "counting fingers" when people's vision was too poor to see anything on the chart.


Lion John checks Julie's blood pressure. One person came to the screening because they were concerned about their vision--we discovered they had very high blood pressure and recommended they go to the emergency room for immediate treatment (in case you were wondering, this person was not Julie).


The two other stations were a hearing test and intraocular pressure, which is a screening test for glaucoma.

We ended up screening 24 people. Although this was not as large of a turn-out as we were hoping for, the people we did screen were very appreciative of the service and the catch we made on the high blood pressure made it worth-while. A lot of people saw the unit parked in front of Super-1, so hopefully this will increase the number of individuals taking advantage of the screenings in the future.

From the left, Lion Mike (the LHSU driver), Lion Sarah, Joey, and Lions Jaela, Liz, and John. Not pictured: Lion Byron and Julie.



Thanks to Lion Liz (who was the LHSU Project Chair) and all the club members who helped with this project--everyone in the Ellensburg Lions Club participated in some way! A special thank you to Lion John who donated hotel points to provide lodging for the LHSU driver.

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