A “Grounded in Health” Fair: Applying Environmental Health Approaches in a Cross-Specialty Community-Based Initiative

Individual and community wellness are shaped not only by clinical medicine but also by environmental and social drivers of health. Yet, preventive services addressing these factors often operate in isolation. To offer a useful integrated perspective, we describe a community health fair in New Haven, Connecticut, that combined health insurance coverage assistance, stroke prevention outreach, environmental exposure assessment, and consumer product safety education to address these intersecting drivers of health. The event was developed through community partnerships and provided free services including blood pressure screening, stroke awareness materials, soil lead testing, pocketbook audits for chemical hazards, and health and dental coverage enrollment support. Implementation required cross-specialty collaboration among neurology, primary care, and emergency medicine, as well as cross-sector collaboration with trusted local organizations. In this article, we elaborate on the event’s structure, implementation process, and the practical considerations that shaped its delivery. Rather than evaluating outcomes, our goal was to document lessons learned from this pilot effort and highlight considerations for others interested in developing similar community-based preventive health programming. Future work, including formal assessment of acceptability, feasibility, and impact, will be essential to determine whether this model can be scaled or adapted to other settings.