Have you ever felt like you are under-informed and over-medicated?
The American Medical Student Association, Student Health and Counseling, and Student Special Events are teaming up today for the Student Health Fair. which will be run by students.
Anna Vestling, AMSA fundraising coordinator, said information will be available on topics ranging from HIV/AIDS to counseling and therapy. She said there will also be live music, a free massage giveaway and free Starbucks iced coffee.
The health fair is today from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Cornell Mall.
Vestling said AMSA and SHAC will have at least five tables with health care information.
"I think it will provide students with more opportunities to learn about resources for their own health care on campus," she said. "They can also learn more about how health care is run nationwide and about the many different student organizations participating."
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Student group Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom will have a booth at the event.
"Spiritual Youth combines the idea that people who choose to have religion can still have the information to make their own sexual and reproductive choices," group member Lori Lavasek said.
The Spiritual Youth table will have free information, pencils, notebooks, cookies and condoms.
"How it works is that when people come up to the table, if they want a cookie, then they also get a condom, and if they aren't too shy to get a condom, then they get free cookies as well," Lavasek said.
There will also be other opportunities for free information and prizes, Vestling said. She said AMSA will have a "Hula for Your Health" contest at noon.
"We'll be having a hula hoop contest and the winner gets a free massage from the Student Health Center," she said.
Vestling said that AMSA will also sell sack lunches for $3. A portion of the proceeds will go to Cuidando Los Ninos, a nonprofit organization that provides child care for homeless families in Albuquerque.
President of AMSA, Phuong Nguyen, said the group is hosting the fair because its members want students to learn more about health care.
Nguyen said she became interested in the field when her father died two months after being diagnosed with lung cancer.
"I spent most of my time during those two months in the hospital," Nguyen said. "I got to see how doctors and nurses cared for my dad. That inspired me, even though it is kind of cliché."
Nguyen also said that it is important for all students to get involved in health care issues.
She said many students are concerned about having to pay for insurance.
"I actually don't have health insurance, and I know a lot of other students who don't either," Nguyen said. "I think having health care insurance, even at the basic level, is an important issue today."
Dr. Beverly Kloeppel, director of Student Health and Counseling, said SHAC will have tables with information on health insurance, stress management and other issues affecting students.
Kloeppel said many students go through years at UNM not knowing what SHAC has to offer.
"We constantly get people in their junior and senior years that say, 'If I'd only known there was a counseling system,'" she said.
Kloeppel said that it is hard for college students to stay healthy. Sometimes they don't have enough time to work out, or enough money to eat healthily, she said.
"I think there are a lot of stress- and time-management issues that go with taking a full load of classes and working," Kloeppel said. "Still, trying to fit healthy behaviors into all of that is difficult."
Kloeppel said she is excited that students organized the entire health fair. SHAC will have nurses and other representatives at its tables to help students get their glucose levels and blood pressure checked.
SHAC doctors will also attend to provide counseling for substance abusers, Kloeppel said.
"I think medicine is very interesting," she said. "There is nothing better than being able to help someone to feel better and to feel like you have had influence in their life."
Student Health Fair
Today
9 a.m.-2 p.m.
Cornell Mall
