Women 4 Wellness offers health information, free screenings
Berl Tiskus
The Women for Wellness Health Fair has grown year after year and provides free medical screenings, including mammograms.
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Preventable diseases are one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and one local health fair helps women in Mission Valley receive free screenings and training that teach comprehensively about health maintenance and prevention strategies before a problem arises.
The Women 4 Wellness Health Fair, hosted by the SKC Center Prevention and Wellness and funded by the Office of Women’s Health each May, has grown to include dozens of free screenings and educational booths in the past seven years targeted at females. The interactive event is set in a fun, educational atmosphere dually meant to engage people in learning about prevention and wellness, while giving free screenings that otherwise might not be financially available or are just too scary for people to get up the nerve to schedule an appointment.
“It’s like a monster clinic,” organizer Niki Graham said.
All the while, health professionals from across western Montana donate their time at the fair to create interactive booths that suck people in with catchy phrases, spinning wheels, and freebies in order to talk about tough subjects like mental health, HIV, and hepatitis.
Graham said the fun atmosphere and comradery between the women visiting the booths often leads gals to step up to the plate for examinations they otherwise might not have.
“It’s provided an avenue where people can come without necessarily having an immediate need,” Graham said. “They might come across a table talking about pap smears and say ‘Oh, I haven’t had one of those in 20 years. I’m married. I don’t have to worry about it.’ But then their friend says, ‘You haven’t had a pap smear in 20 years, really? Let’s go.’ Peer support I think is one of the biggest benefactors with Women 4 Wellness.”
The fun atmosphere also sometimes comes with harsh news that can save lives. Numerous cases of breast cancer have been found from lumps detected by manual exams, with some in young women who were decades away from ever qualifying for a mammogram. For those who leave with a diagnosis, event organizers try to stay in touch and make sure the impacted individual gets care. For those who leave with a clean bill of health, organizers hope tips delivered at the fair will provide a complete toolbox to promote activities like exercise and self-education to cut future health problems off at the pass.
“It’s not something that is a one bam, thank you ma’am kind of thing,” Graham said. “It’s something that should initiate conversations and some thought process throughout the year.”
Organizer Eleanor Vizcarra said the fair has filled a huge need in the community over the years.
“It started the May after the market crashed,” Vizcarra said. “Much to our surprise, our first year we had over 800 women. I was taken a little aback by that … But at that time there was a huge barrier, and that was money. Nobody knew what was going to happen and everyone’s lives had changed. So we got to thinking, let’s give a free cholesterol panel. A free breast exam? Sure. Free vouchers for mammography, maybe. By May a lot of people had lost their jobs. They didn’t have money.”
The market has bounced back since then, and economics still remains a barrier, Vizcarra said. Education on the new insurance requirements add new confusion about who will pay for testing, especially for tribal members who might have qualified for care through other avenues before, Vizcarra said. The fair has tried to educate people on how to understand their health insurance.
“A lot of people may have never used insurance before,” Vizcarra said. “It’s a barrier.”
The fair saw 1,700 women last year and Vizcarra said it is easily probably the biggest prevention and wellness teaching event in Mission Valley. She said she hopes the project will continue to expand in the future to include other educational reminders to stay healthy throughout the year.
There could be a roadblock to keeping the event free and in existence, however. The grant that has provided funding for the past several years runs out in 2015, making fundraising ever more important to its sustainability.
The Center for Prevention and Wellness has hosted a comedy troupe, and other fundraising runs in the past few years to help raise monies for the fair, but right now major sponsors are needed to keep funding at current levels.
“When things are grant-funded, funds will disappear,” Graham said. “We want to keep it free, but it might not always be.”
Graham said anyone interested in sponsoring the event or volunteering can call the Center for Prevention and Wellness at (406) 675-4920.
