For the fourth year Madison Memorial Hospital, Madison school district and BYU-Idaho will all come together to sponsor the Community Wellness Weekend.
The Community Wellness weekend will begin with the Vendor Fair on Friday, May 4 from 2 through 7 p.m. and the Wellness Conference and the Community Conversation will take place on Saturday, May 5, from 8 a.m. through 12:30 p.m.
There will be three professionals speaking at the Wellness Conference. They will be, Kim Kaine, Director of the Suicide Prevention. Doctor Matthew Larson who works at the Behavior Health Center, and Doctor Dawn Cureton from the Behavior Health Center.
Kim Kane, who is the keynote speaker and will be talking about suicide prevention. Doctor Larsen, who will talk about mental illness specifically about prevention people can take. The final speaker will be Doctor Cureton who will be speaking about treating individuals who have been diagnosed with mental health issues.
Doug McBride, the executive director of business development at Madison memorial hospital, in an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio talked about the main theme of the event, Eight Dimensions of Wellness.
“Everyone has different parts of their lives that they need to work on or to benefit them to make them a healthy individual, that can be everything from financial to emotional to social to any different aspects of our lives,” McBride said.
McBride said during the wellness fair they will have close to 100 vendors who will talk about the different areas of wellness that people need to know about.
He said how these wellness weekends began because they wanted residents and professionals to have an easier access to each other.
“The whole idea is to bring the community and our healthcare professionals together into one place,” McBride said. “We have so many wonderful healthcare providers just right here locally in our community, and to be able to offer this ability for the healthcare professionals to see and to interact with the community and to find out what their needs are has just been a really good benefit to everyone.”
McBride said one of the biggest benefits of these weekends is the opportunity it gives people to have access to the screenings vendors provide.
“I think the biggest thing is people being able to be connected with some of the screening they need to keep them healthy,” McBride said.
He said in this event they will have close to 40 different screenings available to the public.
McBride said he thinks it is important for people to attend this event because it opens up the understanding of what different resources are available.
“Often times people struggle with problems or issues in their lives, dealing with their wellness, and they don’t realize there’s even opportunities for them to get treatment, care or help in those particular areas,” McBride said.
For more information about the event you can visit www.idahowellness.org