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We are so excited to announce our Community Health Fair on Friday, May 12, from 4-6 p.m., at Caldwell Park! This is a family-friendly event that includes free food, fun for kids and information on local healthcare resources.
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Your Community, Your Health
By Amy Wuest
In part, our first community health fair is about showing that health is what happens when you go to the doctor. It’s also about showing what happens when you don’t go to the doctor. It’s also about the fact that your health is much more than what happens when you go to the doctor’s office.
…numerous studies suggest that [factors outside of clinical settings] account for between 30-55% of health outcomes. In addition, estimates show that the contribution of sectors outside health to population health outcomes exceeds the contribution from the health sector. -- The World Health Organization
Your health is your housing, it’s your food, your neighborhood, and so much more. Your health is as big as our whole community and as small as a choice to go for an evening walk.
At this event, we want to bring the community together to explore all of the different tools and resources that we have to support our own health and the health of our community. To that end, we are excited to have partners from across the community join us to talk about what they can do to help promote health inside and outside of the clinic. These partners will address topics as wide-ranging as aging, disability, housing, built environment, mental health, family needs, healthcare access, finances, and more.
Together, these factors are known as the social determinants of health. According to the CDC:
Social determinants of health are the nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life. These forces and systems include economic policies and systems, development agendas, social norms, social policies, racism, climate change, and political systems.
At the United Way of Southeastern Idaho, we work to improve the lives of community members struggling to make ends meet by advancing education, health, and financial stability. These are not three separate pillars; rather, they lay at the heart of a complex web of interlocking experiences that drive outcomes and affect the trajectories of each and every one of our lives.
With your help, we know we can change the course of these trajectories to make a healthier, more educated, and more financially stable southeast Idaho attainable for everyone.
Amy Wuest is the Director of Health at the United Way of Southeastern Idaho.
