Last month’s Family Health & Fitness Day was the last for staff at Good Shepherd Medical Center.
Good Shepherd has coordinated on the large-scale event, along with the Healthy Communities Coalition and the Good Shepherd Family Health Foundation, for five years; however, Good Shepherd Education Director Juli Gregory announced Thursday hospital staff will no longer be involved.
“It’s a huge event. It’s a lot to put it on,” Gregory said at the monthly Healthy Communities Coalition meeting. “Someone else is welcome to take it on, but this was the last for us.”
The free September event has taken place at Hermiston High School and included hundreds of activities, demonstrations, informational booths and health screenings. Hundreds of people have volunteered, and as many as 4,000 people have attended it in the past.
Gregory said the event has become too large for hospital staff and volunteers to put on. Instead, Good Shepherd staff is planning a smaller event in May.
“It will still be family-oriented, but it will be a different event. We’re going back to our roots, back to when we first started the event,” Gregory said. “We’re going to keep the parts we feel have the biggest impact.”
The yet unnamed event will take place at the Hermiston Conference Center, which will remove the burden of setting up and taking down tables and booths from volunteers. Most activities will take place inside, which will also remove the risk of poor weather impacting attendance. At this year’s event, Gregory estimated about 2,500 people attended.
“We were down this year, and I think weather played a big part of that,” she said. “That morning it was raining all the way to Tri-Cities.”
This year’s Family Health & Fitness Day focused on free health screenings. Gregory said screenings will be one element carried over into the new event. The new event will have a new name so attendees do not arrive expecting the large-scale action of Family Health & Fitness Day.
“It was a great event. This year was No. 5, so we went out on a high note,” she said. “We really hope everyone will want to be involved in the smaller event.”
