National Health Center Week 2011

August 7-13 is National Health Center Week.  Here in Connecticut, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has declared it also Connecticut Health Center Week, and across Connecticut, CHC has had a great collection of activities.  With the number of sites we have across the state, we started our activities before National Health Center Week started and will continue them into next week.  ConnecticutPlus provides a good description of CHC’s National Health Center Week activities.

Events started on August 3 at our site at Shaws Cove in New London.  From 10 AM until 2 PM, we provided free immunizations, blood pressure and dental screenings, as well as information on information on Medicaid and Women Infants and Children programs, diabetes education, and nutrition counseling.  There were fun family activities, such as face painting and Recess Rocks!  You can find out more about the New London events in The New London Patch and on WTNH.

On Saturday, August 5^th, we had a similar health fair at our Delay Street site in Danbury.  The Danbury Patch and the Danbury News-Times both ran announcements about this event.

Tuesday saw the BEE Healthy Event in Norwalk.  BEE stands for Balance for flexibility, Exercise for cardiovascular endurance, and Eat Well for a healthy diet.  In conjunction with the Carver center, the GE and Hispanic Forum volunteers helped raise awareness through a circuit based program on Tuesday August 9th from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.  As with other events, our Recess Rocks! team helped with fun fitness events.  Norwalk Plus provided additional information about the BEE Healthy event, highlighting some of the important contributions that GE makes to health events in Fairfield County.  Pictures and additional information can be found in a BEE Healthy Album on the CHC Facebook Page.

Another important part of many of our National Health Center Week activities was farmers markets.  On Monday, our Day Street site in Norwalk and at our Franklin Street site in Stamford teamed up for a health fair at the farmers market at Calvary Baptist Church in Norwalk, and then in a similar event at the farmers market at Veterans Memorial Park on Tuesday.    On Thursday, Urban Oaks participated in our Health Fair in New Britain.  Urban Oaks regularly runs a farm stand at our New Britain site and these farm stands and farmers markets are extremely important in bringing healthy food to underserved areas.  The farmers markets continue today in Middletown, and then in Stamford on Saturday.

Also from Monday through National Healthcare for the Homeless day on Wednesday, an ice cream truck visited various shelters where CHC provides health services.  You can read more about the ice cream truck in Ice Cream for the Homeless as well as see pictures of the ice cream truck and the New Britain Health Fair in our National Health Center Week album on Facebook.

Next week, there will be health fairs in Middletown and in Clinton, and then we will on to our next set of events.