The American Medical Student Association is trading candy bars for fruits and veggies during their Healthy Halloween Carnival to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network.
The carnival is taking place in the Honors Forum, on the ground level of the Student Health Center, on Friday and will include a silent auction, live music and painting and games for children. Also, health care professionals will attend the carnival to provide information for parents with pediatric health questions, said AMSA co-director Anna Vestling.
“We wanted to create an event that would promote awareness of pediatric health,” she said. “We decided to take advantage of Halloween, which is an event in which health is typically overlooked.” Vestling said health education, started at a young age, establishes lifelong healthy habits that affect an individual’s health.
“The two greatest contributing factors to illness are age, which you can’t do anything about, and diet, which you can,” she said. “The sooner you start making informed decisions about your life, the healthier you will be. We are trying to inform as many people as possible about this.”
Caitlin Berger, AMSA’s Health Awareness and Education Action Committee co-chairwoman, said the carnival should also increase community support of the UNM Children’s Hospital.
“UNM, as a campus, really needs to get involved in the surrounding community,” she said. “A good way to do that is by helping the children in the hospital see that even though they’re sick right now and can’t come out and celebrate, there are people that care about them. It helps them realize that they are not alone and that the community really does care about them.”
Daniel Jaecks, development specialist for the Children’s Hospital, said he appreciates the volunteers’ time as well as the financial donations from events like the carnival.
“The fact that the students are busy studying and working (and) they still take time to do something for someone else is fantastic,” Jaecks said. “I think it’s important, not only for the community but for the students who get involved to show that they care. If more people gave a little, it adds up to a lot and this is a great start.”
Vestling said AMSA started planning the event in August, and it took them time to have pediatric health care professionals agree to participate.
“We are going to be having ophthalmologists, dentists and all sorts of different professionals that focus on children’s health,” she said. “We are trying to reach out to adults to promote improvement for their children’s health and diet, especially for the holiday season. It’s an effort to promote a lot of health information for parents and students alike.”
Vestling said AMSA is planning more events than in previous years because they want to increase the organization’s presence on campus and provide health information. “We now have four action committees headed by three chairs,
with each action committee holding one event per semester, adding up to eight to 12 events every semester,” she said. “This week we have actually had three events, next week we have one, and two more over the course of the next semester.”
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Jaecks said the hospital benefits from the community interaction that comes from AMSA’s events. The community’s response to AMSA’s events show the need for it, too.
“It’s always nice to know that the community is out there and they do care and they want the hospital to provide the best care, which we are able to do because of the funding that comes in,” he said. “Just because you are sick doesn’t mean you are done being a kid.”
