BWH volunteers at the RTH Health Fair

Late last month, BWH’s Lung Center, Heart & Vascular Center and Phyllis Jen Center joined the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard (RTH) for its annual health fair, providing health resources and information to community members and other attendees.

BWH physicians and staff, including Aaron Waxman, MD, PhD, director of the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Program; Chris Fanta, MD, of the Pulmonary Division and director of the Partners Asthma Center; Lori Tishler, MD, medical director of the Jen Center; and Jorge Plutzky, MD, director of Preventive Cardiology, were on hand to talk with community members about their heart and lung health. The BWHers offered lung fitness tests using spirometers, an instrument for measuring the air capacity of the lungs, as well as screening for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an inflammatory lung disease. Information about smoking cessation and hands-only CPR was also available.

“We had more than 180 members of the community drop in, and we signed up more than 40 people for a healthy nutrition program and 30 for a healthy exercise program,” said Waxman. “It was a very successful health fair.”

Other organizations at the fair included Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the National Kidney Foundation, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Mass Eye and Ear and the American Heart Association.

BWH is a longstanding partner of RTH—a nonprofit organization devoted to developing and maintaining safe and affordable housing for low- and moderate-income people of diverse backgrounds in Mission Hill.