Nursing students held a Community Health Promotion Fair in Trinity Hospital's skywalk Thursday to offer public education on some prominent issues in community health.
The 14 students are in the Dakota Nursing Program at Williston State College's Trinity-St. Joseph's campus.
"Holding health fairs is one of the activities that nurses in community health and public health do. This is a learning experience for the students in what's involved in putting on a community health fair, and getting the experience of talking to the public and answering their questions," said Rhoda Owens, a nursing instructor at the Minot campus.
Article Photos
Katina Tengesdal/MDN • Nursing students Denise Panucci, left, and Deb Haman, right, show some of their display materials at their smoking cessation booth.
"An important part of our role as nurses is public education," she added.
The topics that the fair focused on are some of the topics that are of usual concern to community health nurses - hypertension, diabetes, stroke, healthy eating, adult immunizations, smoking cessation and community acquired bacterial infections.
The students were given a topic to research, and then put together presentations and information on their topics.
"Health-care professionals know what to look for. We wanted to reach out and educate people about the things that they can do to improve their quality of life. This (the community health fair) is one of the big things that we've been looking forward to," said nursing student Emmy Vandenberg.
"There have been a lot of people today showing interest in their health, and wanting to know what they can do. It's very neat," she added.
In addition to informational presentations, the students' booths provided interactive activities and suggestions for living a healthier lifestyle.
"I think it's really important for us to get out in the community and talk about preventing health problems," said another student, Kathryn Voigt.
"At our booth, we wanted to focus on increasing fruit and vegetable servings in your daily diet, and we came up with 10 ways that people could do that. It's a start toward leading a healthy life," she said.
In addition to the learning experience for students, Owens explained, the fair offered community members health resources to use in the future.
"We wanted to provide resources for people to use, and to look at for follow-up information. That's part of our role as nurses, too, providing resources for the public to use," Owens said.