Kids' Health Fair more than health fare

FORT MADISON – The Lee County Health Department showed off just a little bit Thursday afternoon at the Meller Family Health Center.
LCHD staff and volunteers held the third-ever Kids’ Health & Safety Fair, the first ever at the department’s new digs, with about 20 vendors and a regular crowd moving around learning about LCHD services, among other things.
Vendors included area scouting troops, Lee County Conservation, area banks, food vendors, libraries, Southeast Iowa Regional Medical Center, and others.
Emily Biddenstadt, LCHD Community Health Program Director, said the focus this year was providing the community with information about all the programs going on in Lee County, not just health programming.
“Our whole goal this year was to highlight the new building and then use that to our advantage,” Biddenstadt said. “So we could make it bigger and better. We added the bounce maze and the dunk tank. We thought by asking our community heroes to be in the dunk tank we might struggle to find people. We actually were turning people away. We had a lot of 'yeses' and it was great to have those.”
Lee County Health Department Administrator Michele Ross was manning a booth, but said having the event at the new facility created an opportunity for people to come out and have some fun. The previous two years the event was held at the shuttered John Bennett Unit of the former Iowa State Penitentiary.
Two food trucks were on site to provide a light meal for families including the YMCA Test Kitchen’s Dawg Cart. The Fort Madison Fire Department and Lee County Sheriff’s Department were also on hand to give tours of equipment.

Lee County Sheriff Elliott Vandenberg was the first in the dunk tank and took a couple plunges from some youngsters. The tank was filled by FMFD. Other dunk tank targets were Fort Madison Head Football Coach Derek Doherty, Lee County Conservation’s Clay Steele, Central Lee Activities Director Tyler Bryant, and others.
“We really just tried to make it fun for the kids, but also educational for the families so they could learn about what is going on in our communities," Biddenstadt said.
Hidden in Plain Sight was giving informational sessions inside the health center on substance abuse and where substances could be hiding in homes.
Biddenstadt said the evening, which had been in the planning stages for close to a year, was an opportunity for the whole county, not just Fort Madison.
“We really tried to encompass the entire community of the county to provide an opportunity for families to have a fun evening,” she said.
LCHD staff were on hand to assist families with information on vaccines and vaccine records, as well as get dental and vision screenings.
“A lot of time people don’t know what public health does. This was not just an opportunity to showcase what we do, and to showcase where we're located, but also to share that with our community.”