THHS staff distributes information to drive-thru participants Thursday, May 6 at the festival arbor.
By DANA HERNANDEZ
Sho-Ban News
FORT HALL — The Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Health and Human Services program hosted a women’s health fair drive-thru on Thursday, May 6 at the Festival grounds.
THHS was one of many programs that handed out information on the health aspects of wellness, and distributed a grab bag of goodies, a flowered pot and a Subway lunch.
Other programs that participated in the drive-thru event were the Shoshone-Bannock Head Start program, THHS Diabetes program, Victims Assistance Program, Tribal Court, Language and Cultural Preservation Department, Counseling and Family Services, Four Directions Treatment Center, and the IHS. About 300 lunches and grab bags were provided for the event.
THHS staff with flowers and sack lunches for participants.
THHS Health Education Manager, Rebecca Washakie said May is known as Women’s Health Awareness month and since they didn’t do an event last year due to COVID-19 they decided this year they had to do something while also following the Tribes’ policies and procedures.
“So, a drive-thru health fair was something we wanted to do, I think we had 10-12 programs set up. We wanted to make sure we were able to get some of that information out there, and one of the things that we really wanted to emphasize this year and at this time was the COVID-19 vaccine because a lot of our older women are the ones who seem to get COVID-19 and have more complications and they are the ones who probably have more death rates. So, our Native women who are older are at more risk of getting severe complications due to COVID-19 and dying from it,” said Washakie.
She went on to say, the goal was getting the older population in receiving the vaccine, and THHS in general, wants everyone who is an adult, age16 and up to get vaccinated. According to Washakie, “if they can get the vaccine we can create herd immunity within the community and that’s what we want. If we have herd immunity our numbers will go down and we won’t have those transmissions among those high risk populations.”
Miss Sho-Ban Ontaria Arrow White greets FHBC members at the event.
Washakie said they always try and do something before Mother’s Day to remind people that your mother’s, grandmother’s, aunt’s and sister’s health is really important and that women are sacred in our Native communities and are the back bones to families and communities. “They are the movers and shakers and they are the ones that keep the families safe. We really want to make sure the community knows the value of the women in our community and we want to keep them healthy,” said Washakie.
She also wanted to emphasize that women need to get their yearly check-ups such as a mammogram, pap, and immunizations. “We want to let our older population know they can get the shingles and meningococcal vaccines. Also, getting a colonoscopy once they turn 50 and a mammogram once they are 40. We want to make people aware because cancer has really went up, 20 or 30 years ago we didn’t have that much cancer, but now it’s pretty prevalent in our Native communities,” said Washakie.
THHS Community Health Educator, Tammie Scott said the drive-thru event itself was proof that we need to band together and help one another out. Scott said they were trying to put out the message that despite the past year, other than physical health there are other dimensions of health to be aware of, like mental health, emotional health, and financial health.
“Were hoping now that the women can walk away from this event with information about wellness, especially now that things have turned a corner with the way the world is working and we can start to focus on ourselves and get out there and do more this year than we did last year.”