NW Indiana ER & Hospital organized a health fair event for community engagement and education at their Hammond campus on Saturday, September 14.
Jessica Hubbard, director of marketing at NW Indiana ER & Hospital, circled this date on her calendar a long time ago. After a long time pondering the idea of hosting a health fair, she’s grateful that their team finally got the chance to make it happen.
“This is our inaugural health fair,” Hubbard said. “We’ve been here for four years, but we didn't really have the opportunity to do an open house because it was around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is all about us trying to get the community involved and see what we're about. Sharing with the community and building relationships is huge for us.”
The community was able to speak with and learn from various groups such as EMS, police and the fire department. Food trucks for businesses such as Izzy’s Hits The Spot and Arnold’s Tacos were in attendance as well.
Hubbard believes the health fair gives people in the community a chance to distribute useful information with fun activities for attendees of all ages.
“We’ve got our food trucks, the bounce house and other fun games like a ring toss outside,” Hubbard said. “Inside the hospital, we have different health vendors that can take blood pressure screenings and glucose tests to give people knowledge that they may not have had before. We want the people to not just know who we are, but that we’re here to help them with whatever their situation might be.”
Scott Samlan, CEO of NW Indiana ER & Hospital, has also been looking forward to this event for a while. He was thrilled to see so many people come together to put on a successful health fair.
“We’ve been in the Region for the past four years,” Samlan said. “We decided that it would be wonderful to get our vendors and the community together in a health space to provide different avenues of health modalities for the people we’re helping out every day. We're a small community and many of us are like-minded. We want to make sure people live a healthy and fulfilling life, which makes this as great an experience for us as it is for them.”
Samlan echoes the notion of helping get the word out about the NW Indiana ER & Hospital. While it may be a small community, awareness is a point of emphasis for the hospital team.
“We want people to see how much we are entrenched and part of the fabric of this community,” Samlan said. “We strive to be the hospital of the Region. From cuts to bruises to aches, we're there for you. We provide a concierge level type of care. We love our jobs and we love the community.”
NW Indiana ER & Hospital is always motivated to engage the community with necessary health information for every individual they interact with. While this is the first health fair, it’s far from the first event their team has put together since being a part of the Region. Their staff is hopeful that events like this will continue to increase both awareness and the likeliness of people to utilize their services in the future.
“We made a strong effort to let the community know about this health fair and what to expect,” Hubbard said. “I hope that the people who come in will think of us in an emergency situation when they’re sick, break a bone, or anything of the sort.”
For more information on the NW Indiana ER & Hospital, you can visit its website.
