5/14/2008 10:10:00 AM The road to good health Local Health and Safety Fair this Saturday
Last year’s event offered a number of educational fun and games, including a demonstration on drug abuse from the National Guard Drug Demand Reduction program.
It's become an annual springtime tradition in Williams.
This Saturday's Health and Safety Fair at the Williams-Elementary Middle School is expected to provide a number of fun events for everyone in the family, though organizers hope a few lessons may be learned along the way as well.
Free food, drinks and prizes will be offered throughout the three hour event. Special guests will include Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog and Safety Pup. Health and safety fair activities will include the popular bounce house, relay races, child identification kits, hunter safety, child car seat checkups, a fire engine display and plenty more, according to organizer Sarah MacRae of the Williams Police Department.
"It's free. It doesn't cost anything," MacRae said. "Leave your wallet at home and come and enjoy and hope for good weather."
MacRae said the event grows more popular each year and that, this year, there may be one or two new additions to looks forward to.
"I think with everybody we get 150 to 200 people. Each year it gets bigger," she said. "We're adding a couple of extra things, but you'll have to come out and see."
Employees of the Williams Health Care Center will also be on hand for this year's fair. According to manager Cindy Christman, health care workers have offered their own health fair for a number of years and are now partnering with MacRae for the health and safety event.
"The health fair is something we've done now for 15 years. When we started we were pretty small and now we've grown so much that we've really outgrown our building, to have 250 people in for the health fair, so we combined forces with the city," Christman said. "Sarah MacRae invited us to join their event. We're really excited about it. The entire staff will be there and it will be a great opportunity to have some free testing done as well having a chance to meet everybody on our staff."
The event will be held at the Williams-Elementary Middle School from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
"We are going to be present on that day in force and we're going to do free screenings for cholesterol, that's a blood test (and) we're also going to do screening for diabetes and we'll also be able to do blood pressures and the PT (physical therapy) department is going to be available and talk about strength and flexibility. The thing that people need to remember if they are going to have their blood tested is they need to fast, have nothing to eat or drink for 10 hours prior to the test, which makes it a little hard when the health fair doesn't start until 11 a.m.," Christman said, adding that regular testing is the best way to prevent serious illness.
"The road to good health begins with prevention, so if you find out these things early, there are a variety of things that can be done. What we want to do is catch illness early," Christman said. "That's the whole premise behind offering the free screenings."
This year's fair is coordinated by the Williams Police Department, the Coconino County Health Department, the Coconino County Sheriff's Department, the Department of Public Safety, the Williams Health Care Center, the Williams Alliance and the Williams Unified School District's Family-Community Outreach program.
