Minority-focused Little Rock community health fair will provide free screenings, other resources

A coalition of Arkansas minority-focused health organizations will host their first free community health fair and “baby shower,” with an emphasis on Black families, on Saturday in southeast Little Rock.

The event will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at 3701 Springer Boulevard, home of the Watershed Human and Community Development Agency, a Black-owned nonprofit that provides job counseling, food assistance and disaster relief, among other things.

The Little Rock Black Nurses Association of Arkansas, the Arkansas Birthing Project and the Arkansas Minority Health Commission will co-host the event with Watershed, according to a Monday news release from LRBNAA and the Birthing Project.

Attendees will be able to receive health screenings from members of the LRBNAA and the Arkansas Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association, and physicians in Little Rock and North Little Rock will accept referrals for follow-up appointments with individuals who do not have primary care physicians, according to the news release.

Roughly 30 vendors will provide “resources and information about pregnancy, general women’s and men’s health, mental health challenges, body mass index, tobacco use and cessation, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR),” the release states. The event will also sell food and drinks and offer door prizes.

Study: Disparities in Arkansas child health persist, especially for Black families

The Arkansas Birthing Project’s executive director is Zenobia Harris, a registered nurse and an advocate for improving Arkansas’ maternal health landscape for Black mothers. Arkansas’ Black maternal mortality rate more than doubled from 1999 to 2019, according to a 2023 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Earlier this month, Harris expressed support for extending Medicaid coverage for postpartum women to 12 months after giving birth if they do not already qualify for the state’s Medicaid expansion program. A legislative committee voted down the proposed policy, and Arkansas remains the only state without some version of this coverage option.

Arkansas has one of the nation’s highest maternal mortality rates and the third highest infant mortality rate. Maternal mortality is measured by the rate at which women die during childbirth or within a year of giving birth.