USC Chip Health Fair serves the local community

More than 30 organizations came together on Saturday for the USC Community Health Involvement Project’s seventh annual Health Fair at Hoover Street Elementary School. By hosting the fair, CHIP hoped to promote community health and prevent avoidable diseases through providing basic health screenings to the local community. This year, the fair featured a luau-theme along with the free health screenings.

“We have a lot of different booths,” said Danny Le, the administrative director of CHIP. “This includes health-related organizations like the School of Pharmacy, CPR and Hawaii Club to spread cultural awareness.”

CHIP was first established in 2008 by several students to provide underserved communities around USC with basic health screening services and information about prevalent yet preventable health problems. After three years of hosting the health fair on McCarthy Quad, CHIP collaborated with the Los Angeles Unified School District to branch out into the community. Aside from health fairs, the organization hosts an array of events such as fundraisers, basic screening opportunities and training programs for future volunteers.

“The purpose of this whole event is to really bring together all community members with different screenings,” Le said. “That way, we can really educate the community in how to prevent disease, primarily cardiovascular disease.”

CHIP currently has more than 100 active members, consisting of students from different majors and backgrounds.

According to Jessica Thai, administrative director of CHIP, volunteers can just come out and have fun with kids as well.

“We take volunteers from all organizations whether or not they are health majors,” Thai said. “We had a lot of APO [Alpha Phi Omega] volunteers come out and help just setting up canopies, working with the kids. The kids’ booths don’t require any screening knowledge — you can just come out and teach kids about science, buoyancy or nutrition.”