MILWAUKEE — Each semester nursing students at Alverno College take their classroom out into the community to help others. Fourteen students participated on Sunday at a health fair in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood in partnership with Invisible Reality Ministries.
Natalie Hoffman and Lorena Garcia were two out of the fourteen nursing students.
“If we can’t bring the community to health, we bring health to them,” said Garcia.
The event provided information about different topics, from nutrition to lead poisoning and safe sex practices.
“We want to show that there’s more to health than going to the doctor,” said Hoffman. “It starts in the home. You start in your family, in your environment.”
Both said it’s important to have events like this in underserved communities.
“There’s a lack of clinics in underserved communities,” said Hoffman. “It’s hard to get to a hospital or clinic that’s farther away due to lack of transportation or knowledge. Also, we have a lot of single-parent families and they’re working and it’s hard to get them time off to get to the clinic with their kids because the clinics close at 5 and that’s when they’re off work.”
For the past few years, Alverno College has partnered with Invisible Reality Ministry to put on the event. Pastor Will Davis said it’s important to expand the public’s access to health.
“We need to win back the trust with the health care professionals,” said Davis. “The best way to do that is to bring the health care professionals within the underserved areas of Milwaukee but then also that wins back the trust to see both hands of church, institution of higher learning, which is Alverno, and the nurses bringing the plow together because where you live determines that level of access.”
Davis said over the years, he’s noticed the level of trust between the community and health professionals increase.
“They’ve also worked across the street with local business, barbershop over here, people are walking up, they’re getting their blood pressured checked,” said Davis.
He said none of these things would be made possible without the help from the nursing students at Alverno College.