About United to Serve
United to Serve is an annual UT system-wide day of service initiated in
2004, which takes place in April each year. UT Southwestern's
contribution has been to host a day of health and fun for our
surrounding community. The tradition continues this year with our sixth
annual United to Serve Health and Fun Fair!
Everyone's help is needed in many different areas, so there's sure to
be one that interests you! Below you'll find a bit of backround information for each component - when you're ready, visit our sign-up page!
Health Fair
We are looking for a whole bunch of dynamic, enthusiastic folks to
explain a variety of health concepts and diseases to the general
public. These topics include heart disease, diabetes, sexually
transmitted infections, alcoholism, and a whole lot more. Each booth
will feature a variety of visual aides to assist in this effort,
including computer animations, tables, large posters, and in some cases
plastinated diseased organs. A few of the booths will feature
screenings of things like body mass index, blood pressure, and blood
glucose, and one will require physical exams (the "sports physicals"
booth, which is only available to third- and fourth-year medical
students and PA students on rotations). A small degree of medical
knowledge would be helpful for the people who sign up for these booths,
but we will work with you to make sure you know exactly what to say and
how to explain it. The most important characteristic of those who sign
up for the health fair is a great degree of warmth and enthusiasm for
helping the surrounding community.
Spanish language skills are TREMENDOUSLY helpful for the health fair.
Games
Every year at United to Serve we have carnival-type games so
that kids can enjoy themselves during the day. These games take a lot
of manpower to pull off and are a lot of fun both for volunteers and
the public. Since the kids generally speak English pretty well, Spanish
language skills are NOT required for these activities (and in fact, if
you speak Spanish, we could REALLY use your help at either the health
fair or the registration area, so we hope you'll consider signing up
for one of those areas instead).
Medical Museum
A fun section of the health fair designed especially for the kids, the
medical museum will feature a set of interactive exhibits about how the
body works. Features include X-rays, 3D photography (where kids can
take home their own 3D photos!), and a station where kids can isolate
DNA. This promises to be great fun for volunteers, whom we hope will be
very excited about explaining basic physiology to the public. A few
Spanish speakers would be nice for this area too. If you don't think
you can adequately explain these sorts of physiology concepts to the
kids, don't worry; we'll tell you exactly how to do it in advance. We
just hope to find people who are genuinely excited about interacting
directly with kids.
Registration
Once folks come to United to Serve, they will be able to play games,
check out the health fair, get a tour through the medical museum, and
sign up for raffles and other prizes. We like to have a few people on
hand right at the entrance to guide people to where they need to go,
and a few more people to give out health fair registration cards.
Spanish speakers are especially helpful for this area.
Other
As we get closer to the event we will add other jobs that don't really
fit into the categories listed above. For example, these might include
photographers to go around and take nice pictures on the day of the
event, or it might feature people to help hand out food during lunch if
we can find a donor to make that happen. At any rate, check back on
this page frequently to see what else we might have in store for you.
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