Healthy Families Expo provides information and fun

LIMA — Activate Allen County held its Healthy Families Expo on Saturday at the Veterans Memorial Civic Center.

The event featured more than 20 community vendors with a focus on promoting a healthy lifestyle.

“We also have a ton of fun in the process,” said Kayla Monfort, co-director of Activate Allen County. “We’re all about getting education to our residents and also providing a place where they can have free entertainment, free fun activities. So we have face painting, bounce houses, superheroes and a princess dressed up. We have Santa and a live reindeer so we have a ton of things for kids and families and everyone to enjoy.”

One of the sponsors was Mercy Health.

“We have about seven departments represented,” said Ann Styles, community affairs coordinator. “We’ve got the Sleep Center, we have hospice, we have the Heart and Stroke Center, athletic training rehab. We also have Go Noodle and we’re also doing some health screenings through our residency program.”

Styles says it’s important to promote a healthy lifestyle, especially for our youth.

“We want to be able to offer a healthy lifestyle for all ages, all groups, to teach the families and the kids and the parents to be able to be healthy from the ground up and continue on with the healthy lifestyle also to be able to connect them with the services that we offer, whether that is our heart center or physicians and all the services that we offer at Mercy Health,” Styles said.

One program offered by the Allen County Public Health that promotes a healthy lifestyle is WIC, Women Infants and Children.

“We provide nutrition support and education for women who are pregnant and after they’ve had their babies and then children from birth to the age of five, before they enter the school system” said Lori Nester, breastfeeding coordinator at the Allen County WIC program. “Our goal is to make sure that we are hitting healthy food choices, protein, iron, calcium. We do a lot of nutrition education about infant feeding, feeding young children, dealing with picky eaters, all the different things that come up while you’re raising children.”

David Ciminillo, 8 and from Omaha, who is in Lima visiting family for Thanksgiving, shoots an arrow with help from Nina Buchan from Ada, on Saturday morning at the Activate Lima – Healthy Families Expo.

Jenson Werling, 4, of Lima, dances with superheroes and princesses who were at the Healthy Families Expo to entertain the children.

Reach Sam Shriver at 567-242-0409.