The Moorpark College Student Health Center hosted its annual Health Fair along Raider Walk on Oct. 3, 2023, showcasing various community partners and services offered to students.
The Health Fair featured services provided by both the college campus and resources available in the county. Moorpark College Student Health Center Coordinator Allison Barton elaborated on the importance of this event.
“We hold this event for a lot of reasons,” Barton said. “We want to make sure that our community partners can reach students. We want to let students know that we’re here because most of our students don’t know we’re here, even though they pay a health fee.”
This health fee funds a diverse range of services that the center provides, from mental health counseling, free COVID-19 at-home tests, STI testing and a variety of other services. Moreover, the Student Health Center serves as a crucial point of contact for students seeking assistance, even when the center cannot directly address their concerns.
“It’s hard [for students] to talk about healthcare,” Barton explained. “Or even just to know how to navigate it or where to go. So we call that a ‘soft handoff.’ A lot of times it’s what people need; just having that one person who can help you take that first step is essential, especially when there’s a stigma about a lot of these things.”
The normalization of discussions about healthcare and related issues was a central theme of the event, with organizations presenting information on STI prevention, safe sex education, crisis hotlines and even overdose detection.
The organizations at these events serve as a way for students to learn what is available in the county and how to make that first step. Chastity Krier, a student at Moorpark College, experienced that first-hand on Raider Walk.
“I thought this was an event for colleges to transfer to,” she remarked. However, once she learned it was an event for student health, she was able to make contact for information on affordable care offered by the county.
Mental health was a prominently featured segment of the Health Fair, as Moorpark College’s Student Health Center offers every student up to six counseling sessions per semester.
“Sometimes students come in for test anxiety, relationship issues to multiple traumas or anything they need help with,” said Michelle Pereira, a licensed clinical social worker with the college.
Arash Gheytanchi, a licensed marriage and family therapist elaborated by saying, “If it’s more serious and they need long-term therapy, there’s also a social worker, there’s a case manager that can set them up with their health insurance or other resources in the community.”
The passion for the well-being of the students was palpable at this event, with the staff of the college and community partners enthusiastically sharing what they do and why it’s so important to them. Even beyond the Student Health Center, the commitment to student health extends to the classroom as well.
“First-time college students have a high rate of a first episode of mental health issues,” Barton explained. “We have a really robust reporting system. We have instructors that are worried about students in their class and they’ll write a report saying, ‘Please send a message out to this student, they were doing really well and they stopped showing up to class,’ because they want to. They’re worried about their students and their success.”
One major partner of the college, Adventist Health Simi Valley, also participated in the event, being the hospital that offers physicals for the athletics department among other services. Director of Marketing for Adventist Health Simi Valley Melinda Guzman stressed the importance of their presence at the event.
“We just had a student come up to us and he asked, you know, ‘What’s something I need to be conscious about when it comes to my health right now?’ And I was talking to him about health and the differences between urgent care and emergency care. So it’s just important for us to be a part of that because we’re wanting to educate and connect with people in the community”.
The Health Fair, with its informative booths and volunteers, along with free swag, continues to serve as an essential means of outreach to students seeking information about available healthcare services, both on campus and in the community, in an informal and relaxed atmosphere.
For more information on services provided by the Student Health Center, click here.
