Local News

Healthcare Matters

Citizens turn out for DMC event

ELKINS -- Many area residents took advantage of Davis Medical Center's "What Matters to You, Matters to Me" Health Fair Thursday afternoon at Elkins Town Square.

"The event was all about meeting the community and having an opportunity to hear what their needs are," DMC Community Liaison Chad Ware told The Inter-Mountain. "We had providers there from podiatry, surgical services, women's health and psychiatry. It was a chance for people to come down and talk about their health care needs and what matters to them."

The event featured several different tents set up behind the Elkins Train Depot next to the Rotary Amphitheater. The fair was part of Our Town's three-day Fourth of July Celebration, that featured a performance from the Air National Guard Band of the Northeast Thursday evening.

"It was great working with Our Town to hold this event," said Ware. "We sponsor a lot of the events they have. They were great to work with in allowing us to come over there and set up. We have a good partnership with Our Town."

Those visiting the Health Fair had the opportunity to take advantage of several services, including health screenings and other tests that were conducted by DMC employees.

"We offered signups for several of our programs, and physical therapy was on hand at the event," Ware said. "Overall, we had a pretty good collection of people from the hospital come out, including a lot of our nurses and lab personnel. We also had a couple of our newer surgeons there and they had an opportunity to kind of mingle with the community."

Ware said DMC typically has most of its health fairs in-house, but with COVID-19 now somewhat in everyone's rearview mirror, the hospital decided to offer this event in a public setting.

"In the past we kind of did our health fairs internally," said Ware. "To kind of change things up and give it a different twist, we decided to do this one in town. We took to the streets, so to speak, and really just wanted to meet the community where they are at, instead of them coming to see us. We wanted to go see them."

Ware said the event had a good turnout and noted the hospital would likely be doing more health fairs of this type in the future.

"We had a lot of citizens come through; we probably did 60 A1C checks and the NARCAN distribution we had was great," he said. "They had a box of 100 NARCAN kits and they gave them all away after a brief training.

"Events like this are something we want to do more and more of in the future. We saw how successful this one was, so we want to get out in the community more."

Kids' face painting, free giveaways and door prize drawings were also part of the event. Residents were also able to gather literature on services the hospital has to offer.