Highland Medical Center health fair coming up soon

The Highland Medical Center’s Health fair is an educational, interactive and fun way for the medical center to provide basic preventive medicine and medical screening to people in the community. Health screenings are important and can save your life. Highland medical center nurse manager Leslie Armstrong invites the entire community to attend the HMC Health Fair.

“We would like to invite everyone to come out to our 14^th annual health fair Tuesday, April the 22^nd through Thursday, April the 24^th, 7am to 11,” she said.

“We’re going to have snacks after you have your blood work, and a lot of times people see neighbors that they haven’t seen for a while and just a time to visit; and visit our vendors and our tables and learn something new.”

Mrs. Armstrong says that along with community vendors, the sheriff’s office will be conducting their drug take back during the health fair.

“We will have various displays from vendors this year,” she said. “Some people here with us [include] social services, Valley Program for Aging Services, the Highland Center to name a few.  We’re going to be offering the national drug prescription take back event, Sheriff [Tim] Duff will be here and the Drug Enforcement Agency is promoting this program to give people the opportunity to dispose of outdated prescription medications, over-the-counter medications and other substances.   Those dropping off the items will not be identified or questioned regardless of what kind of item they drop off.”

HMC offers the health fair to provide people with life-saving tests that are available in a convenient and affordable way, along with helping them to have an understanding about their health and the sooner a threat is detected, the higher the success of treatment and the lower the risk of complications. Mrs. Armstrong says the health fair offers a range of screening tests to identify potential threats.

“As usual this year, we’ll be offering the bloodwork,” said Armstrong.  “For free, we will have the fasting blood sugar testing,  fasting triglyceride and cholesterol testing, and blood pressure measurement along with weight  and height measurement.   Wednesday and Thursday this year, the Highland county health dept will be offering TDAP vaccine which has tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis in it, which is the whooping cough vaccine.”

Mrs. Armstrong says that there are more extensive screening tests available for a small fee can help identify abnormalities that lead to a heart attack, stroke, aneurysm and cancer.

“For a minimal cost, we will offer more extensive lab work which is a complete metabolic panel which checks your liver and kidney function,” she said, “a TSH or thyroid, a CBC or cell count, and that will be for $20.00.  Also for men who are 50 years old or older, we will do a prostate specific antigen, which is the PSA blood test to check the prostate for $15.00.  For any questions or if you’d like to schedule an appointment for the health fair, please call us at [540] 468-3300. Hope to see y’all there!”