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Fair is shot in the arm for commuity health
Health and Wellness Fair
Amanda Hollowell holds up a sign encouraging people to become organ donors
Amanda Hollowell holds up a sign encouraging people to become organ donors. - photo by Tiffany King

The fifth annual Community Health and Wellness Fair Saturday at the Riceboro Youth Center provided information, health screenings, weight-loss products and exercise activities for everyone interested.
Organized by Project Reach GANG, its leader Lavonia LeCounte said, “We know that not everyone has health insurance, and even if they do, we have a wealth of information here. We want to inform people on how to take care of their bodies, eat right, exercise, their weight and dental health.”
Booths represented a range of health topics: Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a massage clinic, hospice, Helen’s Haven Children’s Advocacy Center, Georgia Forestry Commission’s fire prevention, health insurance for children and families, organ donor registration, Liberty County Head Start, Ardyss K. Bell products, nutritional drinks, chiropractic care, Tumblebus and more.
Representatives of the Liberty County Health Department BRAVE III Project discussed its free mammogram examination services, and conducted HIV tests. Liberty Regional EMS personnel checked individuals’ blood pressure and discussed contributing factors to high blood pressure. SNF Holding Co., a sponsor of the event, provided free eye exams. After which, they evaluated the results and recommended further eye checks.
Vonzell Varnedoe, dietician and nutrition consultant at Fort Stewart, talked about the importance of having color in one’s diet.
“Fruits and vegetables provide the color in our meals. Green vegetables prevent blindness, orange helps with night vision, white food like onions and garlic help with your immune, yellow also helps with immune, red is for heart health and blue-purple is for memory and brain function,” she said. “Those colors are antioxidants. They go into your bloodstream and wherever the blood goes, it stains your body’s cells to protect it. So any kind of diseases or germs that enter your body, your cells are protected.”
Varnedoe also displayed a prop of what five pounds of fat looks like and test tubes that demonstrate how much sugar certain foods and snacks contain.
There were door prizes, music, jump ropes, Hula Hoops, beach balls and exercise games for adults and children.
Project Reach God’s Anointed Now Generation, a non-profit youth outreach program, has been in Liberty County for 17 years. Ebonie Frazier has been a part of the organization since it started, at age 10.
“It’s always been my passion to be a part of anything related to the youth and young adults,” Frazier said. “Our motto is, ‘An unfulfilled life is a wasted life.’ So this is where I discovered my purpose. Being a part of the health fair, I believe we’re giving back.”

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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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