Wellness Fair offers students health advice

The Office of Student Wellness and Development welcomed students to learn more about health at the Wellness Fair on Thursday, April 19 in the Student Center Ballroom.
Director John Fincher said the goal of the fair was to help students make better health and wellness decisions by showing them how choices they make today affect the rest of their lives.
“All we can do is try to get the information out there and make it available and help them with anything they need, but it’s up to them to make the change,” Fincher said.
He said health tends to be something students don’t think about a lot, but they need to.
Students don’t consider how staying up late, drinking large amounts of caffeine and pulling all-nighters has a negative effect on their bodies, he said.
A way for the department to get information to the students was through setting up booths and having different features and material at each.
Fincher said there were over 50 representatives signed up, but 14 more unregistered booths showed up.
“Right now, I’d say we have about 64 separate exhibits,” he said.
He said the most popular
booth tends to be Tropical Smoothie.
Students were able to gain extra credit for classes if they attended the fair by visiting at least five booths and entering their names into a drawing for door prizes, which included USB drives, MP3 players, gift cards, bulletin boards, picture frames and more.
Fincher said his favorite part about the fair was that it was open to the whole UCA community.
“Students can see that everybody needs this type of information,” he said.
Senior Amy Zarate, a nursing student, ran a booth as a part of her community nursing class.
“A lot of health disciplines are here,” she said.
Zarate said her booth was about exercise.
“We are talking about the importance of it, including types you should do and places in Conway that offer different types,” she said.
She said there are several different positive aspects of exercising.
“It decreases your fat, helps you avoid chronic disease, improves your mood, gives you more energy and helps improve the quality of your sleep,” she said.
Zarate said she thinks the most important characteristic of the fair is that it provides information to the general public on how to better their overall health.
She said it helps provide different screenings for health issues like high cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure.
“It connects people to different resources to help them with their specific health problems such as depression, back pain, etc.,” she said.
She said her favorite part about the fair was the back massage that one of the booths offered.
“It’s amazing and I feel much more relaxed and healthy,” she said.
Booths for the wellness fair included the Alzheimer’s Association, Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, Arkansas Foot and Ankle Clinic, Conway Regional Health, Community Nutrition, Counseling Associates, Crossfit Fitness, Hurley Chiropractic and Wellness Center, Sexual Assault Program, Smoothie King, The Witness Project, UCA Counseling Center, UCA Departments of Health Dietician, Health Sciences, Kinesiology, and Physical Therapy, UCA HPER Fitness Center, UCA Speech Language Hearing Center, UCA Student Health Clinic, UCA Student Wellness and Development and Wal-Mart Vision Center.