Engage people at health-fair booths
Interactive activities promote learning
To make a health fair successful, make sure the booths engage people, says Janet Hale, RN, program manager for the health information center at University of Missouri Healthcare in Columbia. At their annual health fair for children, everyone who participates is asked to come up with some unique way to teach the children.
For example, local dentists had a bunny with a huge toothbrush, and the bunny showed kids how to brush their teeth. The nutrition department had boxes with food inside. Children reached inside the box, felt the food, guessed what it was and then found its appropriate place on the food pyramid.
"I find I am able to draw more kids with games," says Hale. She frequently uses a roulette wheel with health care questions. Those who get the answers right receive a small prize.
Interactive learning opportunities are important, agrees Beth Crispin, MS, health educator at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle. One popular activity the hospital frequently uses is a teddy bear clinic. At the "clinic," children dress up in physician’s coats and examine the teddy bears with medical equipment.
Give them more than a handout
The purpose is to reduce the fear and apprehension around the medical experience that children often have. At another fair, kids were fitted for child safety seats or booster seats, and parents were given a prescription for the kind of seat they should be using so they could more easily purchase the right kind.
"Health fairs haven’t been shown as an effective way to change people’s behavior, although everyone wants them and thinks they are great. If we are going to make the effort, we want to make it interactive so people walk away with more than just a handout that might get recycled. They have a prescription or an experience they can take away with them," says Crispin.
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