The West Liberty University Highlands Center hosted a health screening clinic on April 13, 2022. Dr. Rebecca Meacham, director of the Behavioral Health Clinic, and Dr. Carol Zombotti, assistant professor and director of clinical education, collaborated to host the clinic for their programs and other science initiatives at WLU. The screening was free and open to the public.

“Dr. Zombotti and I started talking last September about how we might be able to collaborate. I was interested in finding a way to utilize the Highlands campus building and Dr. Zombotti was interested in doing a screening. We combined our ideas and came up with the idea for a free college of science health screening to promote WLU, the college of science and the various clinics that we have on campus,” said Dr. Meacham.

According to Dr. Zombotti, a variety of health screenings were conducted to offer a variety of services. The services included speech, cognitive, hearing, anxiety and depression, blood pressure and resting heart rate. “The screenings were offered by the faculty and students from the department of communication sciences and disorders, psychology, nursing, exercise physiology and athletic training. We also had a presence from admissions.”

“The behavioral health clinic provided the screenings for depression and anxiety (for both children and adults.) The speech and hearing clinic provided screenings to see if these particular areas are a concern,” said Dr. Meacham. She noted that for the behavioral health screenings, she wanted to provide more information about things people often wonder like– “Do I worry too much? Do I have an anxiety disorder? Am I depressed or just sad?” With the screenings, the patients got an idea if their symptoms were normal, or if they should consider going further into talking with someone. “The nurses took blood pressure and the exercise physiology program provided some medical screenings and information for their program ‘exercise as medicine,’” said Dr. Meacham.

This is the first year a health clinic has been administered by WLU at the Highlands Center, but Dr. Meacham and Dr. Zombotti hope to make it an annual event.

“We are going to be there [Highlands Center] on Tuesday’s starting May 24 from 9 a.m-6 p.m.” Dr. Meacham mentioned she hopes that the health screening will alert the public that behavioral health and speech and hearing services will be offered at the Highlands. “Especially during the summer, when there are not as many people on campus, I think it will be really helpful and I also think that we can reach more people by being in a location closer to Wheeling, W.Va.”

For more information about the previous and/or future health screenings at the Highlands Center, contact Dr. Meacham at [email protected] or Dr. Zombotti at [email protected]. For more information about the WLU Highlands Center, email at [email protected] or call at (304) 336-8301.