The Kern County Public Health Department, in conjunction with other local health organizations, held a health and wellness fair on April 25, at the Mill Creek Central Park in downtown Bakersfield.
Together with the Amgen tour of California, the Bakersfield Sports Foundation and both Mercy and Memorial hospitals, the county put together an event to promote health and wellness through education to the community provided by Bakersfield’s different health organizations.
As well as encouraging people to get into living a healthy lifestyle, the event also promoted bike riding in the city of Bakersfield.
KBAK channel 29, in association with Bike Bakersfield and local bike shops, will be accepting donations of used and broken-down bicycles to be refurbished and distributed to children in need.
Tina Chapa, executive director for Bike Bakersfield, was on hand to encourage bike riding and healthy living in the community and to promote the bike drive.
“What we’re doing out here today, is encouraging the community to come out and learn how to be healthy,” said Chapa. “And the other part of that is encouraging the public to exercise and to use the parks that we have here in Bakersfield and walk or ride their bike, anything that is non-motorized is what we’re encouraging. And so what Bike Bakersfield is doing is part of that encouragement to the community.”
The festivities included live music in the park and food from local farmers. Health screens were also conducted for the public by Kern County hospitals, as well as free H1N1 vaccines for anyone who wanted one.
The Bakersfield Police Department was even on hand to instruct patrons on how to properly install child car seats.
Kern County Public Health Director Matt Constantine spoke about the event and what it means to the community to get involved with their health.
“This is the first ever health and wellness festival, and the purpose of it is to bring together all aspects of the community with the common theme of health. And so you see different people, from hospitals to animal control to non-profit organizations to medical professionals, all talking about health and what we can do to improve our well being in Kern County,” said Constantine.
Constantine further discussed the importance of health among Bakersfield residents and diagnosed the issues surrounding Kern County’s serious concerns.
“Annually, the state releases data that shows that Kern County is struggling with chronic diseases like heart disease, and stroke and diabetes, and in fact, the 2009 data shows that Kern County, unfortunately, has the highest rate of death due to heart disease than any other county in the state of California. So we’re number one and this is something you don’t want to be number one at. So knowing that we’re in that situation, we have to start talking about what we can do to improve our statistics, but more importantly improve our health.
“We have a number of other things going on, we’re pulling people together and saying what could we do and we look at obesity as one of the primary causes of heart disease, 60 percent of our population is obese in Kern County and that’s just amazing, more than half of us are overweight,” said Constantine, who teaches Food Safety at Bakersfield College in addition to his duties as public health director.
There will also be another health and wellness event May 1, in downtown Bakersfield on the corner of 20th and Eye Street and will feature a farmers market, rock wall climbing and a bike ride for the community to participate in, according to Chapa.