Healthy Spartan Fitness Initiative Hosts Mini Health Fair
Norfolk, Va.—As a part of its annual Family Weekend affair, Norfolk State University in conjunction with the university’s Spartan Health Center, will host a mini health fair Saturday, Oct. 13 in the Mills E. Godwin Student Center from 9 a.m. to noon. The mini health fair is a project of the university’s ongoing Healthy Spartan Fitness Initiative, a campus-wide program designed to address the obesity epidemic and the decrease in physical fitness across the Norfolk State University campus community. The health fair is open to students, faculty, staff and the local community near NSU.
Participants at the Healthy Spartan Fitness Initiative Mini Health Fair will have the opportunity to pick up information about diet and exercise, and see displays from NSU’s health and physical education department. The City of Norfolk Department of Health will also be on hand to provide HIV/AIDS counseling and nutrition counseling. Persons needing to get their cholesterol checked will be able to do so at the Bon Secours Health System station. Eastern Virginia Medical School will also provide glaucoma screenings.
In spring 2005, the university developed a task force of representatives from the academic and administrative areas throughout the campus to address the obesity threat. According to Dr. John Anderson, director of the Spartan Health Center, “NSU’s approach is based on the recognition that being overweight and having poor physical fitness are conditions of lifestyle and poor eating habits that can only be changed when an individual makes a significant and life enhancing lifestyle change.” Using this premise, the task force developed a highly participatory action plan that includes public awareness, education, health promotion, and prevention and outreach activities intended to bring about a greater understanding of the impact of obesity and impaired physical fitness along with specific measures to address the problems.
For more information about the Healthy Spartan Fitness Initiative, call the Office of News and Media Relations at 823-8373 or the Spartan Health Center at 623-3090.
