USD’s AWOL does a health and wellness clinic with SDSU’s SCAPP

USD’s Alternative Week of Off-Campus Learning (AWOL) partnered up with SDSU’s Student Collaboration for the Advancement and Promotion of Pharmacy (SCAPP) for a wellness clinic held in downtown Vermillion on March 26. The health and wellness clinic similar to holistic medical centre welcomed all members of the community to provide screenings for a person’s blood glucose, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and ASCVD risk. 

Mackenzie Petersen, the co-lead for the event, said they have been attempting to do a health and wellness clinic with SCAPP for a few years but finally got it worked out this year.  

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“A previous AWOL board member had this idea, but then COVID year struck, and it was very difficult to get anything planned. Since Emily (Eisenbraun) has a passion for health and wellness, when it was her time to pick an alternative weekend, she thought it was a great idea to try to reboot the health and wellness,” Petersen said. 

Petersen said they oversaw the advertising for it and decided to hold the clinic in Vermillion as a way to maximize the advertising to students as well as community members.

“Since this was an AWOL event and we oversaw advertising, it made sense to have the clinic in Vermillion in order to maximize advertising. SCAPP has traveled to do clinics like this one in South Dakota before, so they were very willing to travel down to see us as well,” Petersen said. 

Annika Skogg, a member of SDSU’s SCAPP, said it’s been in the works for a while to be able to do a health and wellness in Vermillion. 

“It’s an opportunity for the Vermillion community to kind of be exposed to pharmacy students and the screenings that we offer, just as part of a mission to be like a service organization,” Skogg said. 

Skogg mentioned they wanted to do the health and wellness to provide education about health as well as get SCAPP’s name out to the public. 

“SDSU has a lot of influence in both Brookings and Sioux Falls just because that’s where the program is kind of set up. So just a good opportunity to get our name out there and get to more communities in the state to be aware,” Skogg said. “Overall education about diabetes, heart health and really a lot of prevention strategies that people could get involved with.” 

Peterson said although they do not believe AWOL has traveled to SDSU to do a health and wellness clinic, it does not mean that collaboration with SDSU will not happen in the future.