A community heath fair in Harambee on Saturday at 3045 N. Martin Luther King Dr. will feature health screenings, Covid-19 vaccinations, giveaways, music, and an appearance from Green Bay Packers legend Antonio Freeman.
The Race For Wellness Health Fair will run from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., with a vaccination clinic running from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event was originally intended to include a 5k run, but organizers scraped those plans amid the continued spread of Covid-19.
Vendors at the fair will address not only men's health, women's health (including mammograms) and children's health, but also mental health, personal finances and affordable housing.
"We want to make sure we have a healthy community, and health doesn't necessarily just mean a physical body," says Travis Landry, Regional Vice President of WestCare Wisconsin and one of the fair's organizers. "We've opened it up to anything that could be healthy for a person."
Landry says the health fair has taken on extra importance because of the continued rapid spread of Covid-19 and lagging vaccination rates in some communities. Landry, who says he was reluctant to get the vaccine at first before he researched its safety, says the health fair won't try to convince anybody to get the vaccine if they don't want to. Instead, it will simply provide them with information so they can make the most informed decision.
"We hear too many myths and we don't do enough homework on our own to make sure that we understand what it is," Landry says. "So the first thing we're doing is educating people on the vaccine and its benefits, so that they can understand that the myths that they've heard are not factual. That's the biggest thing: education."