Ontida Apinorasethkul

DOS792 Fieldwork II
July 1, 2015
Community Service
Penn Medicine (or Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania) has
a PennCare campaign, which includes any fundraising and/or outreach
events in the community. I had an opportunity to volunteer in an
outreach event at the Odunde Festival on June 14, 2015 to promote
healthy lifestyle choices, blood pressure measurement, and general
health related information. Odunde festival is one of the largest
African American street festivals in the country thats held on the
second Sunday of June each year.
Odunde is known for its authentic African marketplace full of
vendors from various African nations, the Caribbean and Brazil. At the
start of the festival, it was a tradition to give an offering of fruit and
flowers to Oshun, the river goddess. The event went on all day to
celebrate the coming of another year.
Each year at the Odunde Festival with Penn Medicine, we have a
theme to raise health-related awareness to the general population in
our community. This years theme was blood pressure awareness =
stroke reduction. Statistically, African-American are more at risk for
stroke than other racial groups in the US. High blood pressure is the
number one risk factor for stroke, therefore, our booth was set up to
measure blood pressure for anyone that attended our tents. The
visitors were provided with some health-related pamphlets to promote
healthy living and be more aware of their risk factors. There was a
great turnout as many people were in line to get their blood pressure
measured and interested to know what those numbers mean. This
enabled more people to be conscious of their health issues and
prevention.