WCHC inviting public to ‘investigate health’ during 2019 KidzFest on May 17

Kids of all ages are invited to put on their detective hats, dust off their magnifying glasses and join the Washington Community Hospital and Clinics for free acticities at their annual KidzFest with the theme 'investigate health.” KidzFest will be held on Friday, May 17, from 4:30-7:30 p.m. in Washington's Central Park.

Greta Clemons, special events coordinator for WCHC, said the goal of the event is to get in touch with the community and familiarize people with what the hospital has to offer.

'We do it just to get kids out and give them health tips and advice, and just to get our hospital out there and let them know the services we have out there as well,” she said.

To coincide with the theme- investigate health- kids will make an ID badge with all their information and fingerprints. They will follow clues to each booth to decode a message and solve the mystery.

Clemons said she feels its important to the hospital staff to do an event that caters to kids, because they want to present the hospital as a place for help and healing and not a scary place. To accomplish this, the hospital is putting out more booths that will be manned by staff members to better acclimate the community to the care providers.

'For example, our radiology department will be out, and they're bringing their viewing box to show different X-rays, like a pumpkin, so they're doing fun stuff like that,” she said.

More than 30 booths will be available to visit as area businesses and organizations will be staffing booths as well to give out their own health and safety tips. The Washington Police Department will be there to talk about bike safety, farmers will be around to speak about safe harvesting practices and area banks will sponsor a booth on financial health, as well as many others. All activities are free and open to the public.

'We definitely want them to have fun and learn about health and wellness not just in the hospital,” she said of connecting kids to area health and safety providers. 'I think it's important to start it young, that way they're building habits young and will continue that on the rest of their lives.”