Health Update: Health Update: Black Family Wellness Expo aims to close health care gaps – What Experts Say– What Experts Say.
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Finding access to health care can feel out of reach for many underrepresented families.
What You Need To Know
- A free Black Family Wellness Expo will offer health, dental and mental health services in Lexington
- The Frankfort/Lexington chapter of The Links Incorporated is hosting the event
- More than 20 professionals in health, child care and financial services are expected to attend
- Organizers said they aim to address high rates of hypertension, cancer and maternal mortality in Black communities
For Wendy Jackson, a longtime Lexington-based OB-GYN whose practice has catered to women of all ages, expanding access was a mission she was born to fulfill.
“I spend my life making sure that they have access to great health care,” Jackson said.
As she works to bring her medicine, dental, wellness and mental health services under one roof, she is putting her expertise to use for the fourth Frankfort/Lexington chapter of The Links Incorporated’s Black Family Wellness Expo.
The international service organization helps with social development in underserved communities.
“I just so happened to be involved in the health and human services facet, which aligns with my expertise in OB-GYN,” she said.
Jackson said she has spent six months planning for more than 20 different professionals in fields like medicine, child care and financial services to offer their help.
From blood pressure and diabetes screenings to dental care, women’s health and mental health services, the expo covers it all.
“We understand, we recognize, what plagues the African American community, in terms of hypertension and cancer and maternal morbidity and mortality,” Jackson said.
Events like this help shift the narrative, she said.
“Through the Lions Club, the hemoglobin A1C screening; they saw they had an elevated A1C that was in the pre-diabetic range, and they changed their lifestyle, had weight reduction because of that,” she said as she discussed progress in past years. “They feel like they wouldn’t have otherwise made that change if they didn’t go to that particular table and have the screening performed.”
The work is personal for Jackson.
“When I step outside the walls of the clinic, I may take off a white coat, but I’m still a doctor,” she said. “I possess knowledge that can benefit our community.”
“What good is knowledge if you don’t share it with others?”
The expo will take place Saturday, March 21, at Consolidated Baptist Church off Russell Cave Road in Lexington from 9 a.m. to noon.