UAMS 12th Street Center Teaches Community How to Survive the Holidays

By Ben Boulden

Leslie Moore, left, and Cora Housley, both third-year students in the UAMS College of Pharmacy, demonstrate some fitness exercises that can be done using the ordinary household furniture.

Amanda Hickman, left, administers a flu shot to a patient at the 12th Street center.

Nov. 14, 2014 | The UAMS 12th Street Health and Wellness Center’s “Surviving the Holidays” event Nov. 6 showed the public how to enjoy the holidays while avoiding the season’s unhealthy pitfalls — flu, poor nutrition and lack of physical activity.

‘Surviving the Holidays’ also marked the beginning of a slate of Thursday night events geared toward public health education.

“Beginning next year, we will have regular education nights like this,” said Cora Housley, a third-year UAMS College of Pharmacy student and the center’s director of internal events. “This is a startup night, so patients know there are different events going on every month on Thursday nights. They can plan on using these events to learn about heart failure, diabetes and women’s health, just to name a few. Our goal with expanding beyond our regular clinic nights is to address more specific healthcare needs expressed by the community.”

The UAMS 12th Street Health and Wellness Center opened in early 2013 as a community-based, student-led, interprofessional health and wellness center that provides free health screenings and health management services for people in the Little Rock Promise Neighborhood and surrounding areas. The center includes services by students and faculty across the UAMS colleges of Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health and the Graduate School.

During ‘Surviving the Holidays,’ about 20 students from the colleges of Pharmacy, Medicine, Health Professions, and the UAMS Graduate School staffed tables with dozens of informational pamphlets on diabetes, nutrition, smoke cessation and other health issues. Flu shots also were administered, and students demonstrated some simple exercises that can be done with a desk and chair.

“One of the goals of ‘Surviving the Holidays,’ apart from the immediate one of helping people improve their health, was to inaugurate a regular and sustained program of events for public health education,” said Lanita White, Pharm. D., the center’s director. “I think we met that goal. The positive word-of-mouth news is that we are here, we care and we are a health and information resource for the people in the Little Rock Promise Neighborhood and surrounding area.”