To celebrate National Health Center Week, which is the second week of August ever year, CommUnityCare is starting a day early. It’s holding a free kids health fair Saturday at its clinic at 825 E. Rundberg Lane, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The event will feature free health screenings, child identity cards and fingerprinting, personalized nutrition plans, Championship Hearts screening for athletic children ages 14 to 18, prizes, refreshments and magic tricks. The whole family is invited.

At 11:30 a.m., CommUnityCare will host a news conference to kick off the week and “spread the message that we need to invest in an accessible and affordable community health system,” said David Vliet, CEO of CommUnityCare, the largest provider of health services to indigent people in Travis County.

This year, the week has set aside two days to focus on special populations: homeless people on Wednesday, and farmworkers on Thursday.

Here in Austin, free health screenings for the homeless will be held Wednesday at the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless parking garage behind the ARCH and at the Salvation Army from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Offerings will include inoculations for hepatitis, blood glucose checks, confidential HIV screenings, foot care and blood pressure checks. Participants will receive toiletry kits, flip flops, sun screen and refreshments. Other community service organizations will offer hair cuts and chair massages.

The National Association of Community Health Centers says that the clinics serve 18 million people, including nearly 940,000 homeless people.