The Lifestyle Medicine Club at UCLA held the second of its biweekly free clinics Feb. 1 to provide health screening services for people in south Los Angeles.

The free clinic took place at the Full Gospel Community Church of God in Christ, said Roger Williams, one of the church’s assistant pastors. At the event, the club provided health screening services including vision tests, blood pressure tests, pairing people with social services and personalized health education.

Members of the Lifestyle Medicine Club wanted to use the clinic to provide resources to families who struggle to go to health professionals and are experiencing food or housing insecurity, said Tammy Shen, a co-president of the Lifestyle Medicine Club and a UCLA alumnus.

Williams said Shen brought the initiative to him, and he helped to clear the way for the event to happen at the church. He and Shen had been working together for several years on various health care-related projects, including a hypertension control program for seniors, he said.

The Lifestyle Medicine Club wanted to have the free clinic in south LA because access to health care is limited in this area, said Ashwath Nayagadurai, a co-president of the Lifestyle Medicine Club.

“We’re planning on having clinics every other week because we think that it could be an opportunity to build community and provide care,” said Nayagadurai, a fourth-year biophysics student.

Shen said the club took attendees’ blood pressure, height and weight and directed them to a vision screening station. Depending on the results of the blood pressure test, they then had personalized discussions about changes people could make to improve the results, she added.

Tena, an organization that provides assistance for patients to navigate health insurance and other resources, also attended the club’s most recent clinic, Shen said.

Shen said the clinic also had an area for children, with volunteers playing with them as their parents or family moved through the different stations of the free clinic.

Nayagadurai said this idea of a children’s corner came from what the club learned from its first pilot free clinic in December.

“That’s something that I would have never even thought about before coming to the clinic – how important it is to have maybe one or two people taking care of the kids while the moms or the dads get their health checked,” he said.

Nayagadurai said the organization has a lot of autonomy over every single part of the clinic, adding that it is able to acquire services to meet the community’s needs. He also said the clinic was able to provide personalized advice for lifestyle changes and added that the clinic provides small pieces of advice tailored to individual health situations.

Williams said that beyond the services provided, the event also brought happiness to the community.

“The one thing that I saw at our last event is that everybody was smiling,” Williams said. “The students were happy to be giving. The people who came to us were happy that they were able to receive the services that they were getting, and the mood of the whole thing was just remarkable.”