Appalachia

Area served: West Virginia
Religious/political affiliations: None. R.E.A.C.H. is a project of the West Virginia University Institute for Community and Rural Health.

From their website at http://www.hsc.wvu.edu/icrh/Students/Project-R-E-A-C-H

What is project R.E.A.C.H.?

It stands for Rural Education Alliance for Community Health. It is a student run student-staffed rural health outreach.The purpose is to educate rural West Virginians about healthy living and provides health maintenance information to people in potentially low health-access areas. The project encourages patients to schedule appointments with their local doctors to follow-up on their current health status and helps the patient to find a Primary Care Provider, if they do not have a local doctor.

Goal
• Provide Health-care to various counties throughout West Virginia that might not have access.
• Collaborate with Marshall University, West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine (WVSOM) and other health sciences schools to ensure state-wide participation.

8 Different Stations:
1. Nutrition: Portion control, Healthy Snacking, Food Prep
2. Exercise: Everyday Movement, Kids Keep Fit, Pedal at work Challenge
3. Smoking Cessation
4. Blood Pressure screening
5. Self-Breast Exam
6. BMI Station
7. Diabetes Education
8. Oral Hygiene

Volunteers Needed
• Volunteers are needed to run each station, register patients, and set-up/tear down.
• By volunteering you will have an opportunity to practice your clinical skills of interviewing, calculating BMIs, and taking blood pressures.
• There will be monthly opportunities for volunteers, and would like to have 10 volunteers from each health sciences school (WVU, Marshall University and WVSOM)

Leadership Opportunities
• First year and second year representatives.
• Representatives for Charleston and Eastern Campuses.
• Responsibilities include helping to plan all the events as well as picking a location to be the event leader to plan an event yourself.
• If you are interested, send an e-mail to the following address: projectreachwv@gmail.com