Health Fairs as a Way to Promote Wellness in Communities and Workplaces

As I noted previously, wellness is inextricably linked with lifestyle and the key is creating incentives for behavior change.

Oftentimes the most effective way to influence human behavior is face-to-face interaction. This is what makes health fairs a powerful approach to fostering wellness and health promotion. Health fairs can be sponsored by local community organizations, corporate employers, healthcare instutitions or any combinations of these. In fact, collaboration of "unlikely" stakeholders holds the greatest potential to find the most effective solutions for reaching out to people and influencing their behavior.

So what distinguishes a good health fair and how to organize one?

The key to a health fair is addressing people who are not as engaged in their health as they ought to be. A health fair needs to provide education and focus on explaining the easy steps people can take to prevent sickness and improve their well being.

Several organizations published guides for developing an effective health fair:

• American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): A Guide to Organizing and Promoting Your Health Fair
• Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF): Attendance at Corporate Health Fairs
• Texas A&M Cooperative Extension: Health Fair Planning Guide

As AAP puts it a successful health fairs needs to do more than provide educational and screening services, but serve for broader community outreach and socialization:

In addition to educating people about health issues, a health fair offers several benefits for sponsors and exhibitors as well. It's an opportunity to organize with others in the community to generate goodwill; it increases the visibility of one's practice, services, or resources; and it provides a number of opportunities for positive publicity.

Health fairs and local events can play a powerful role in health promotion and should be greatly encouraged.