ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
The motto of the Lions Club is ‘We Serve,’ and in Liberal, the Noon Lions Club finds many ways to serve the community it calls home.
One of those ways is by providing various screenings through the annual Community Health Fair, which is scheduled this year for Oct. 5.
In years past, the Kansas Lions Club has brought its mobile screening unit to the Seward County Activity Center, and the unit provided testing for hearing, vision and blood pressure. Liberal Noon Lions Past President Steve Hecox said, however, once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, bringing the unit to Liberal became too expensive.
“The Kansas Lions decided it wasn’t feasible anymore financially to bring that mobile screening unit out across the state,” he said. “You had to have a big truck to pull that trailer.”
Similar to a booth at this year’s Kansas State Fair, the Noon Lions will now set up canopy tents set up in a corner of the Activity Center for screenings.
“We’ll have the equipment in there to monitor vision,” Hecox said. “We’ll also have a table there where we do finger stick blood sugars. Lions Club is also interested in diabetes and trying to do some screening for diabetes.”
The Kansas Lions Club provides monitors, and Hecox said the Noon Lions will provide three separate vision screenings.
“One is called Pedia Vision, and it’s for six months up to 12 years,” he said. “It’s a unit they can use to try to determine if there are any vision issues in that age group. There’s another monitor we have that looks at determining peripheral vision. As you’re looking straight ahead and what you see out here to the side, your peripheral vision, we can test that as well. That one we’re all familiar with is visual acuity. That’s the one when you hear about 20/20 vision. We can determine what your visual acuity is by using that screening.”
Hecox said all of the tests provided will be free of charge, and everyone is encouraged to come to the 2024 Health Fair, which he said transforms and changes lives.
“As a community, we’re involved in that,” he said. “There are people who are low income. They can’t afford a lot of things, so they’re offering these services. A lot of these services are free of charge. There is a charge for some of the blood work, but it does provide a service to our citizens.”
The Community Health Fair runs from 7 a.m. to noon Oct. 5 at the Activity Center, but Hecox said people can still get services past the noon hour.
“Sometimes, we have a little bit of a line,” he said. “Whoever’s in line, we’ll go ahead and see them no matter the time.”
Hecox recalled one particular case of a person getting served after noon.
“We were getting ready to shut down our booth for Lions Club, and this lady came in with her four children,” he said. “She came over to our area. She was really interested and wanted to at least have the vision checked on her kids. We were able to go ahead and see her. She told us she had to work half a day Saturdays. That’s why she was coming in late. She’d just gotten off work, grabbed her kids and came over. We were able to see her. She was tested as well as her kids.”
Hecox said this is just one example of how Southwest Medical Center, the host for the Community Health Fair, is using the event to meet community needs.
“I think it’s very worthwhile,” he said.
Hecox emphasized what the Lions Club does at the Health Fair are screenings and not a diagnosis.
“We are just screening,” he said. “If we have someone who’s outside of the norms with any of these screenings, whether it’s your blood glucose or your vision, what we do is refer them to their private provider. They have a sheet of paper they take with them, and they can take that to their provider, or they can go to their local emergency room, whereover they needed to go to have further testing done to be able to have a diagnosis made.”
The 2023 Health Fair saw 138 people come through the Lions screening booth. Hecox said not all of these were for blood sugar or vision testing, but about 10 to 20 needed referrals.
The Kansas Lions mobile screening unit allowed for hearing tests too, but Hecox said those are no longer available at the Health Fair because of the unit’s absence from the event.
“All of those hearing cubicles were located inside that trailer,” he said.
Hecox said promoting community health through the Health Fair is just one way the Noon Lions serve Liberal.
“Another way we serve our community is in the school system,” he said. “We have an agreement with the school nurses, and as they’re meeting with the kids as school begins, they do assessments on the kids. If they feel there might be a vision issue, the Lions Club will pay for a visit for that student to one of the local optometrists here in town to take care of that. That student can be further evaluated. The school nurse is doing the initial evaluation, and sometimes, they feel there’s something there that needs to be looked at further.”
Hecox said Noon Lions has great members, all with a desire to serve their community.
“As we look around and see we have helped people not only on the Health Fair, but students with vision testing at school to go on to have testing done, but also we award scholarships to Junior Lions,” he said. “They’re seniors in high school, and they come to our meetings. We meet every Monday at noon at Seward County Community College except for holidays.”
The Noon Lions Club likewise gives two scholarships to graduating seniors from Liberal High School, and the group also helps two LHS band students attend the Kansas Lions’ annual Band Camp.
Hecox said it is very awarding for local Lions to be able to assist in their community.
“We serve,” he said. “That’s our motto, and we’re all about serving our community.”
