To celebrate National Volunteer Month, Northwest AHEC is thrilled to empower and assist our team members in making a difference in the community through volunteer work. Our primary focus lies in addressing pressing social issues like food security, housing, and employment. Several Northwest AHEC staff met up on April 4th to kick off National Volunteer Month at Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC to lend a hand in Community Meals, where each week thousands of meals are lovingly prepared, tray packed, and boxed up for delivery to programs serving seniors, children, neighbors living with disabilities, and others.

A problem long-associated with developing countries, food insecurity (FI) – the lack of adequate access to food – can contribute to higher infant mortality rates even in this country, according to a study conducted by scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

The Salvation Army of Greater Winston-Salem will be holding their Annual Fundraiser on Thursday, May 13th at 12:00PM-1:00PM. Registration is free. 

One of my favorite things to do it sit, listen, and talk with interesting people. For almost two years now I have had the pleasure of sitting down with some beautiful humans and recording these conversations for our Healthcare Insights in Northwest North Carolina podcast https://soundcloud.com/nwahecwebmaster

The Northwest AHEC Practice Support Team is committed to promote understanding and improve the orientation of Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) for North Carolinians. In order to support these goals, we will share a publication on SDOH each month on our Practice Support Blog. This week, we would like to introduce an article "Suburban Families' Experience With Food Insecurity Screening in Primary Care Practices" from PubMed.Gov. Our practice support team has identified this article as a valuable resource to healthcare professionals in our region. The article touches on a number of food insecurity issues which enable the healthcare provider to look at the patient as a whole person instead of a specific condition in order to improve overall health outcomes.