Health And Safety Fair Is All Free, All For The Community

It’s time to get healthy, Newtown.

The 16th Annual Newtown Great American Health & Safety Fair will be held at the Newtown Middle School on Queen Street on Saturday, September 26, from 10 am to 2 pm. There will be more than 40 exhibitors participating, and they range from actual medical services to all kinds of health, family, and environmental information, and of course lots of free give-aways.

The exhibitors will be set up in the gym, some of the health screenings will use classrooms and some participants will even be outside under the front awning and on the front lawn. All of the volunteer Fire Departments, Newtown Underwater Search & Rescue, and Newtown Volunteer Ambulance will be set up in the front of the Middle School.

Newtown Prevention Council will sponsor a bicycle give-away, and the Newtown Health District will be having a food drive to help support the Newtown/Salvation Army Food Pantry.

The health fair will host the final sessions of the Hearts for Harmon CPR Challenge, where volunteers from the local ambulance corps will train 16 individuals on the American Heart Association’s CPR Anytime program.

This initiative is being conducted in memory of the late Newtown Bee sports editor Kim Harmon, who suffered a heart attack in December 2007. The CPR Challenge not only provides initial training for the individuals involved, but asks participants to pledge to use their training kit to train ten other people in the coming year.

Ultimately, the goal is to train 1,000 individuals in CPR and the use of an automatic external defibrillator with the original 100 training kits that were underwritten by Newtown Savings Bank, and distributed through various training sessions since March. There are approximately16 CPR Anytime kits remaining for these final training sessions, which will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis during the fair.

Numerous valuable health screenings will be available for free to the public as well, including:

* Newtown Lions Club sponsors vision and cataract screening.

* Bethel VNA and Family Health Care Center will be doing blood pressure screening.

* Colonial Chiropractic Centre will be doing scoliosis/posture screening.

* Skin cancer screening with the assistance from the Newtown VNA.

* Newtown Health District – Impact Health will be doing cholesterol screening.

* SNAP Fitness will be doing body composition analysis.

Danbury Visiting Nurse Association Inc will be providing flu shots (flu shots are covered by most insurances, please call DVNA at 730-5239 for more info).

The members of the Organizational Committee for the health fair, Mae Schmidle, Della Schmid, Donna Culbert, Judy Blanchard, Natalie DosSantos and Sandi Cole are all very excited about the collaboration that is going into this year’s fair.

“This is a terrific community event — it’s got something for everyone, it has all of our community partners — local physicians, dentists, visiting nurses, the public school system, our Parks and Recreation Department, our Public Works, all of the emergency first responders, CPR training and many area agencies and businesses,” said Ms Culbert, who is also the regional health district director. “Where else can you go and get all of these services, all of the information, all of the free give-aways, in a beautiful, open air atmosphere in the center of town, where you can walk through and check out what interests you, chat with your friends and neighbors and it is all free?”

Ms Culbert is encouraging all local residents to turn out for this event.

The health fair’s sponsors include Aqua Environmental Lab, Dr Joshua Baum, Dental Associates, Masonicare at Newtown, MetLife, Dr Bryson Filbert, Jr, and The Newtown Bee.