Special Populations’ focus is to highlight and celebrate different demographic patient groups, or “special populations”. As a Local Patient Care Project, the idea is to focus on local special patient populations and try to identify any potential issues that can be addressed, as well as educate our chapter’s students about the many different groups that make up our local community.
Of the many demographic groups that the Special Populations project focuses on, geriatric awareness is an initiative that is relevant to our local community. With this initiative, the goal is to reach out to the elderly community to make a positive impact on their well-being. Some prospective projects for this initiative include highlighting geriatric healthcare at our chapter’s annual health fair and performing health screenings at local senior centers. As future health professionals, it is important for us to understand this population to provide the highest standards of care to encourage a longer, better quality of life.
Pediatric awareness is another local patient care initiative that focuses on serving our pediatric population. The goal of this initiative is to provide hope and happiness to children, educate families on healthy lifestyle changes, and develop relationships with the children of our local community. We have several potential and upcoming projects that will take place throughout the year to honor our goals for pediatric patients.
The Education Committee is another initiative that we organize through our Special Populations Project. This committee reaches out to children in local schools and after-school programs to talk about nutrition and teach them about safe hygiene practices, like hand washing. By using an interactive approach to involve students in our presentation, we discuss the importance of being healthy and knowing the food groups, as well as understanding how to perform basic hygiene tasks and knowing their importance. We pass props around the class for children to visualize portion sizes and invite volunteers to the front of the class to place various foods in the correct food group on an oversized plate. This project will be a major focus for our team this upcoming year.
Among our many projects that highlight the geriatric and pediatric populations, our committee is also planning more outreach events to support other local demographic groups, such as high school students, new immigrants, local religious communities, and families, among many others! We are excited to learn about and help the many different types of people who help to make our local community so special and unique.
Special Population Chairs:
Gainesville Campus
- Dina Krisjestorac
- Jingzhou Yang