Baptist – North Mississippi Hosts Annual Health Fair, Sees Significant Growth

Baptist – North Mississippi held its annual Health and Wellness Fair on August 22. Originally a children’s health fair, Baptist decided to incorporate new components into this year’s event to create a health fair for the whole family.

Jennifer Eastland, marketing coordinator for Baptist hospital, said incorporating activities for adults as well as children has increased the number of attendees. Eastland said five years ago, there were about 60 attendees. This year, there were 1,200.

Eastland said she believes there were a lot of factors that helped increase the attendance this year.

“We are up to 50 vendors now,” Eastland said. “Families could go to each different vendor, and they can find out all these different services for their children. They could also do fun things while they’re there, too.”

The fair offered several educational materials to families during the event.

Eastland said families were able to get free vision, hearing, dental and developmental screenings as well as information on bike safety and car seat safety among many more things.

In addition to health screenings and informational activities, families were able to participate in classes such as Zumba, and children were able to get face paintings, participate in hula-hoop contests and tour fire trucks, ambulances and helicopters.

“We even had Mrs. Jill from Square Books Jr. do a greeting and a song for the children.” Eastland said. “And Mrs. Nancy with the library did a puppet show. Meredith with Lafayette literacy council did a presentation on reading to your children from an early age. We had entertainment, nutrition and exercise. We had fitness demonstrations, and we also had My Michelle’s there with healthy nutritional food tastings as well. So, it was absolutely a phenomenal day full of healthy and nutritional information for the entire community.”

Randall Haley is a social media editor and staff writer for HottyToddy.com. She can be reached at randall.haley@hottytoddy.com.