Health Fairs

[Guest Tinki]

Have any of you done Health Fairs? I did one a few years back and we used Lifeline Screening and I was wondering who everyone else used. Or did they you gather up all the doctor yourself - let me know what you have done in the past.

 

http://www.lifelinescreening.com/

[Stacy 0]

I actually have to do one this year. It will be our first here at the facility, as well as my first in planning it. Can you give any other tips? We are planning it for Sept, and we want to make it a community event. I will check out your link and see how it can benefit us.

Thanks

Stacy

[KateAA 0]

There are many community groups looking for Health Fairs. We invite all of them and have two rooms of information for Seniors and our "community". The American Heart Association, Alzheimer Association, Cancer Society, Parkinson's Association, MS Society, Red Cross sets up a Blood Mobile Drive, the County has many outreach programs for Seniors, Meals on Wheels, Arthritis Association, Literacy Volunteers, RSVP, Volunteer Center and Hospice to name just a few. We go through our phone book and send letters to everyone that we can. We even include local churches as they have some outreach programs that might interest Seniors. We also contact our food vendors and our suppliers to show their stuff. If you are luck enough to also be able to offer a Flu Shot clinic then there will be lots of people at your program.

We then send invitations to other nursing homes, senior centers, Adult Day Cares, Churches, Assisted Living Facilities, local companies HR Departments, and anyone else that we can find in the phone book. We have our residents stuffing envelopes and sticking address labels for weeks. We send out at least three mailings. We also send invitations to our neighbors. We invite all sorts of schools including our local gerentology schools and nursing schools.

We then e-mail and mail announcements to TV, Radio, and Cable providers. We also send them 3 mailings. We do flyers for churches and stores as well as posters for local companies.

This is a big community event and there are a ton of resources that are available in your phone book, library and in the newspapers. We don't charge for booth space as we try to encourage as many people as possible to attend. We also have door prizes and give aways from our facility. Those tote bags are pricelss with Seniors.

Hope that this helps.

[Guest Tinki]

I guess the difference is the time spent and turn out. If you do it yourself you will spend tons more time but you will have a great turn out. If you let someone else handle the effort, it might not be as effective. I have done it both ways - the first one I did was with entire facility helping out and it was pretty successful but time consuming. The second one I did a company came and put it together but the turn out was not that great!

 

 

I would like to see more thoughts on this topic!

Karen

[bigchris 1]

We do one each year, but it serves several purposes. 1) For the residents who may not want to have testing done ( i.e some independent, HUD, etc.) 2) As a marketing tool and a community project and 3) as a fundraiser for activities.

 

I can tell you that in the beginning it was plenty hard to do, but you will learn as you go and become more organized. Now it is a simple process that has big returns.

 

 

BC