Family Health Fair fun for kids

Well over 1,000 people attended the Family Health Fair at Loma Linda University's Drayson Center on Sunday.

The event mixed serious medical issues, like high blood pressure, diabetes prevention and mental health with fun things like face painting and origami.

"It's lots of fun," said Melody Luikham, who brought her 4-year-old son, Jared, to the fair.

"It's good to have some health habits reinforced by others, like the importance of brushing your teeth regularly.

"It's also lots of fun for the kids," Luikham said.

Andrew Hirinouchi, 26, was among those teaching origami techniques to young fair attendees.

Hirinouchi went to elementary school in Japan, where he learned the art.

People at the fair especially liked the origami "frog," which can hop surprisingly far with the proper finger pressure, said Hirinouchi, who is a biostatistics major in Loma Linda's School of Public Health.

Kids also seemed to like an educational booth called the Teddy Bear Clinic, where LLU student nurses did head-to-toe assessments of teddy bears selected by each child.

After an explanation of the physical exam, children would then administer a flu "shot" to their stuffed animal.

They use a real hypodermic plunger and barrel, but there's no needle, said Clyde Dieto, 21, a School of Nursing junior, who is also the school's community-service vice president.

The child then placed a very small version of a bandage on the teddy bear, which they got to take home.

Veronica Flores, 7, of Loma Linda said she liked giving her bear, named Kelly, a flu shot "because it made him healthy."

As part of the health fair, LLU nursing students administered real flu shots without charge.

Tiffany Mambo, 21, a junior in the school of nursing, rotated between several stations, each with a different task.

She liked the booth that gave flu shots the best "because you are doing things that feel like real nursing."

But she also enjoyed the blood-pressure booth, where she manually inflated the cuff to get a reading.

As part of their coursework, student nurses do blood-

pressure readings for patients at Loma Linda University Medical Center.

But those are automated devices, so she doesn't get the experience of doing things the old-fashioned way, which sill done in many health care settings, such as convalescent homes, she said.