Amid Gurnee Mills’ zillion household goods and wearing apparel emporiums, shoppers at the Gurnee mega-mall last weekend could also find health tips; eye exams; screenings of blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels; even free back and foot massages.
The health checks were part of the first Y-Wellness health fair sponsored by the YWCA of Lake and McHenry Counties in partnership with several other health-related institutions.
Held in the mall’s Show Court, the fair primarily targeted women by featuring $20 mammograms in the Cancer Resource Center at Entrance H and attitude-lifting talks from breast cancer survivors, including Minnesota author Christine Clifford, who wrote “Not Now, I’m Having a No Hair Day.”
The fair’s female slant made Gurnee Mills a natural location, according to the YWCA’s coordinator, Lisa Vesterfelt, and Victory Hospital coordinator Jan Knobbe.
“This has the space and the demographics we need. We’re told the mall attracts 100,000 shoppers a day,” Knobbe said.
“And women are shoppers. We are reaching out to them where they are, particularly now when many are doing their Christmas shopping,” Vesterfelt said.
They reached Suzanne Kaufmann of Gurnee, who called friends to come join her to take advantage of the fair’s freebies and low-cost offerings.
Kaufmann, just finished with a mammogram and about to do the blood pressure screening, said, “I think this is a great idea. Mammograms can be so expensive. And they have a lot of good, free information here that people can use.”
The bargains did not end when the fair closed. Victory Hospital diagnostic services manager Mary Witte was handing out osteoporosis information and encouraging people to sign up on a mailing list for certificates that would entitle them to a bone-density screening at the hospital in January that will be offered at about half its usual $132 cost. “A lot of people don’t know much about osteoporosis. But I think in a few years the bone screenings will get as much attention as mammographies,” she said.
