Get healthy! Run (or walk) to the free Wichita State health fair!

The 2013 Spring Health Fair is kicking off from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Heskett Center gymnasium. Sally Beckett, health fair coordinator, is hoping fair-goers leave feeling enlightened. 

T-shirts will be given to the first 400 people who fill out a survey. 

 “We try to have this once a year to raise awareness and elevate people’s consciousness about (health) … We want to enlighten people about their personal health, community health, environmental health,” said Beckett, who is the fitness and wellness coordinator for WSU Campus Recreation.

WSU Campus Recreation, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Student Health are sponsoring this year’s event. The WSU community and Wichita residents are invited to the fair for all or part of the three-hour event.  

 “We have a wide range of booths,” health fair committee member Laura Young said. “We have ones for general health, like cancer awareness and tobacco sensations for those wanting to stop smoking or at least lessen how much they smoke.”

Other booths include Gamblers Anonymous, New Balance and Heads shoe stores, Green Acres Market, the east Wichita health foods store and more. 70 booths will be present.

A handful of student organizations will have representatives at the fair, including Student Health, the Alcohol Advisory Board and others. Each booth features give-away items that attendees can collect in a bag handed out to the first 500 people.

“It’s a combination of all these different areas of health,” Beckett said. “We put it all together in one thing and we hope that people will leave enlightened.”

The first few years of the health fair took place in the Heskett Center lobby. Due to popular demand, it continued to relocate until it landed in the gymnasium three years ago. 

“Then we started doing registration online and after that it just skyrocketed and it went viral,” Beckett said. “And the thing just grew like that. It doubled, even quadrupled.”

Now the committee thinks attendance may have stabilized. No matter how many people attend, the fair will always be about the same thing: living a healthy life.

“In order to be a happy person, live with contentment and get along with people, you need to be healthy,” Beckett said.