Second Annual Frances Huggins Community Health Fair and Street Store
Camarillo, Calif., April 27, 2016 — CSU Channel Islands (CI)’s Second Annual Frances Huggins Community Health Fair and Street Store promises to be three times as big and at least twice as colorful as the first one.
Student organizers expect about 300 people from the surrounding neighborhood to attend the fair, which will be from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 30 at the St. Paul Baptist Church Annex located at 840 South G Street in Oxnard.
Zumba classes; performances from Ballet Folklorico de CI and Mariachi; physical and mental health screenings; FOOD Share Ventura County; 25 vendors and a pop-up street store offering free clothing will all be part of this year’s event.
This year’s theme is “Healthy Kids, Healthy Families.”
“The main idea behind this year’s health fair was to create a community environment of healthy living,” said faculty advisor and Assistant Professor of Nursing LaSonya Davis-Smith, DNP. “That starts with our youth and young people. We want to focus on kids eating healthy, living active lives and improving the health outcomes of the entire community.”
Davis-Smith said she let the interdisciplinary student team run the project, with senior Emily Hops in charge of the event. Hops is a Liberal Arts major with an emphasis in holistic health.
Because she is a dancer herself Hops, 22, knows the value of activity in an overall healthy lifestyle, so she wanted to make activity an integral part of the fair.
“As a dancer and a future health professional, I understand the benefits of physical activity,” Hops said. “I personally have many hobbies that involve physical activity including belly dance, Zumba, hip hop, yoga, and hiking. My hope was to provide health fair attendees with creative and engaging ways to get their 30 minutes a day of exercise.”
Hops said active hobbies not only burn calories, but aid in stress management, release endorphins, build a sense of community, and add a lot of fun to everybody’s day.
Also involved in the project are Nursing and Spanish students, who have been handing out fliers for the fair at Farmers’ Markets and other community events.
Representatives from FOOD Share will be on hand to give out fresh fruit and vegetables and enroll qualified people for CalFresh, a food assistance program for low income citizens.
Health care workers from St. John’s Regional Medical Center will check health indicators like blood sugar, blood pressure, body mass index (BMI) and give written tests to assess mental health.
There will be panel discussions, presentations, a raffle for 10 bicycles, and a performance from a local competition cheer team of girls ages 7 through 12 called the Unique Diamonds.
The Pop-Up Store is a continuation of a project started in 2015 by CI Communication students. The students created a local version of a worldwide movement called The Street Store in which low income or homeless people are allowed to select clothes and try them on, just as they might in a clothing store. The process offers more dignity than taking whatever is given to them.
The Community Health Fair was run by nursing students out of the Frances Huggins Community Clinic, a clinic nursing students created out of a rundown trailer and named for the mother of Bishop Broderick Huggins of St. Paul Baptist Church. Frances Huggins was a health care pioneer in the poor community where Broderick grew up.
Last year the Street Store and the Community Health Fair were two separate events. This year, the two are being held together with sponsorship from the CI Center for Community Engagement; the CI Nursing program and B.A. Huggins Ministries.
For more information contact, LaSonya Davis-Smith, Assistant Professor of Nursing at 805-437-3878 or lasonya.davis-smith@csuci.edu.
# # #
About California State University Channel Islands
CSU Channel Islands(CI) is the only four-year, public university in Ventura County and is known for its interdisciplinary, multicultural and international perspectives, and its emphasis on experiential and service learning. CI’s strong academic programs focus on business, sciences, liberal studies, teaching credentials, and innovative master’s degrees. Students benefit from individual attention, up-to-date technology, and classroom instruction augmented by outstanding faculty research. CI has been designated by the U.S. Department of Education as a Hispanic-Serving Institution and is committed to serving students of all backgrounds from the region and beyond. Connect with and learn more by visiting CI's Social Media.