People come to the Kentucky State Fair for many reasons the food, the displays, the rides.

But one unique draw is the Health Horizons Pavilion, where health organizations from around the state offer everything from flu shots to free cancer screenings.

The U of L Health booth is one such stop where fairgoers can get health information that may save their lives.

We're out at the state fair today, basically to help kind of spread awareness of a lot of the resources that we have in the community here.

You have offers a deep breadth of resources for people from everything from cancer treatment to stroke treatment to general practitioner care, all of those things around the community.

And so we just wanted to give people kind of a feel of the resources, especially with it being senior day.

We have availability of blood pressure screenings to help check just what your blood pressure is.

We have things like stroke risk assessments that are actually taking into consideration what your blood pressure is and then other risk factors that you might have, things like atrial fibrillation, things like cholesterol levels, your activity level, your BMI.

Things of that nature.

We have the cancer screening busses available at the state fairs.

Always been a great point of contact for us.

It's just a perfect stream, I guess, of people that they can stop as they wish or we kind of communicate with people as they come by just to kind of engage and allow them the opportunity to maybe ask questions that they might not have that point of contact with.

Maybe they don't have a primary care provider.

We can help connect them with the resources to get one.

It's very common that when we're out here at the fair, we're encountering people every single day, multiple times throughout the day that are saying, Yeah, I've got to go to the doctor.

That's not my thing.

I just I don't have to go to the doctor.

I don't have health conditions.

Okay.

Well, do you not have health conditions because you don't have health conditions Or do you not have health conditions because you're not seeking the medical professionals to help you understand how to treat that and how to move forward with those?

We do hope that every single person has a medical professional that they can rely on in that way and have a primary care relationship with those people.

But if they're not going to do that, can they at least take this one encounter, this little snippet in time, and make it something very impactful for them?

So I think having this stop point here where people can come in, no pressure, no commitment to it, but knowing that I can find out that information about my blood pressure, I can at least maybe that triggers something in me either to do something on my own will to start limiting my salt intake, to start controlling my diet a little bit better, doing those proactive things to help push me to that better level of wellness and take that information and really translate that into action items, I think is what we hope that people will do with this information today is.

While you're in the Health Horizons Pavilion, be sure to stop by Kentucky Association of Health Plans pop up clinic to get a flu shot and exchange for a free, unlimited rides bracelet while supplies last.