Health Fair Suggestions

juju

I am going to be organizing a health fair for our employees this spring. Our medical carrier will come and do an interactive activity with employees ("fatal vision" - simulates drinking and driving). Our other carriers will just send literature. We were thinking of getting a local masseuse to come in and do short employee massages, a gym to do body-fat measurements, a cooking school to do a healthy eating demonstration, and some financial planning advice from a local bank.

We will have giveaways and a raffle. Most of our employees work directly with clients so they won't be able to stay too long, so I would like them to get the most bang for their buck.

Has anyone had experience with any large organizations coming in to provide low-cost or free services for a health fair? Regardless, what type of displays/interactive events did you offer? We are a non-profit and would like to avoid breaking the bank on this one event if possible. Thanks for any feedback anyone may have!

Betty I_O

We coincide our annual "BENE-FAIR" with our open enrollment for medical/dental insurances. We have dental, medical, optional life, and optional personal lines of insurance carriers present, as well as our EAP. We also provide employees with their annual benefits statement, and have information about all of our benefits available. Our insurance carriers provide raffle prizes for our raffle, as well as have raffles of their own at their displays, we have a popcorn cart and cotton candy making machine, and it's a fun day for everyone. We close the HR office, and the entire staff spends the day (7:30 AM to 5:30 PM) at the event, assisting employees with questions, etc.

Since we are a health system, we call upon our various departments to provide interactive exhibits also; the participating department's employees staff the exhibits for the event. We vary the offerings each year, and although ours is not billed as a health fair, such things as free cholesterol checks, blood pressure checks, mini-massages, blood glucose testing, and hearing tests are always high traffic draws. We also ask our health insurance providers to do some sort of interactive presentation.

deniseE

We've done very similar things in the past...sometimes we tie it in with the flu shots (all ee's are eligible for one at our expense)..

We've contacted some of the trade schools for demonstrations...they work inexpensively since it provides practice for the students and free advertisments for the school.

You may also want to contact organizations like the American Heart Assoc, American Dental Assoc, different cancer/disease specialty groups, they may provide screening or assessment information. One other thing that we've done is have the bone marrow registry available to answer question and get ee's signed up to be potential donors.

It's a great idea...and well worth the time!

JEBtrois

JUJU,
I would bet that your local hospital or hospitals would be more than willing to provide some fantastic on-site health realted offerings. Examples...blood pressure checks, blood glucose testing etc. Healthcare is in a maelstrom right now and most hospitals and providers are hungry to get access to employers, especially if you have a large insured base. Contact the PR or Marketing departments at the hospital and they will likely offer assistance Just my thoughts...

John

HR in NY

I am currently setting up a health fair as we speak. This will be the first one we have done. Our local hospital will come for the morning and everyone can get their blood pressure checked. Since February is heart month we will have a nutritionist with some healthy snacks there to give advice on diet. If someone has high blood pressure when they get it done there will be someone there to guide them further. We are also going to have speakers on subjects such as quitting smoking, a healthy heart, lyme disease and living with diabetes. Our Health insurance broker will be here and our EAP Rep. I'm hoping this will be very successful and something we will continue. We have just moved to self-insuring so we are concentrating on getting everyone healthy.

HRDallas

We started our health & benefit fairs 2 years ago and they've been a big hit. We do it for 1/2 day and coincide with free flu shots. This year we got our RX vendor to do free cholesterol & blood sugar testing. We had several alternate medicine representatives (accupunturist, office yoga instructor, homeopathic dr, etc). We had a local health food store provide info & free samples. We contacted Baylor Hosp here in Dallas and they sent people to discuss Healthy Hearts and a nutritionist to cover Healthy Eating. We had rep's from our 401k, bank, gym &/or YMCA, we even had a psychiatrist talking about mental health. We provide all types of healthy breakfast foods & drinks and the vendors supplied door prizes & give aways. There's a masseuse in our building who gives us corporate rates & he does free chair massages for our health fairs - there's always a line there. So far, the only thing we've paid for is the flu shots & the yoga instructor. It's really worthwhile and informative. I've found that the American Heart Assoc, Diabetes Assoc., etc will only provide pamphlets, but even that's helpful. Good Luck.

Safety Witch

Some other suggestions, in addition to the valuable posts above, that we have tried...

1. Bone density test was conducted by a company that caters to health fairs. Very fun. Employees had to take their shoes off and place bare foot in a pedal-like pan that took a picture of the bone density. Good info, especially for menopausal women or women at high risk for osteoporosis.

2. We contacted local gyms who offered discounts for joining within a specific period of time after the company health fair. Some companies offer an incentive of partial membership payments as long as their employees are active. The gyms brought in flyers, sipper bottles and other give-aways. Big hit with the employees.

Health fairs are a lot of work, but the employees seem to enjoy the efforts of management to bring them information.

Good Luck and Have Fun.

AJ SPHR

This may not be an option for you, but several years ago I put on a health fair for employees and we held it on a Saturday. That way the whole family could come. We had the vendors for open enrollment in attendence to provide literature on benefit plans, but we also lots of things for the kids, like i.d. kits (I think they fingerprint and take pictures for identification if kidnapped or something? don't quite remember the specifics since I don't have kids but this was a big hit!) and made i.d. cards for them. We also had face painting and a bit helium-filled play thing - a caterpillar that kids could crawl through.

And for employees/parents we offered blood pressure screening and flu shots and other testing that others have mentioned. We worked with one of our biggest medical plan vendors, who had lots of contacts with these kind of agencies and was able to give me good ideas. Oh, and we even had LifeLine - an emergency helicopter from a local University Hospital - fly in and kids could go out and see what was inside them. That was a HUGE hit.

There are lots of ideas for you, even free ones because a lot of these agencies will come in for free to be able to get out to the public. Good luck!