Health Fair at the Drew Wellness Center

The Governor and First Lady's Healthy South Carolina Challenge is pleased to announce the USC School of Medicine's fourth annual SNMA Health Fair. The event, hosted by the Student National Medical Association, will take place on Saturday, February 21 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. All are invited to attend at the Drew Wellness (2101 Walker Solomon Way, Columbia).

Mrs. Sanford said, "This health fair offers numerous resources, and I encourage people to use this event as an opportunity to take charge of one's health. In many instances, chronic disease is preventable by adopting healthy lifestyles emphasizing nutrition, physical activity, and not smoking. Early detection and prevention save lives."

The health fair will feature free health screenings, activities for children, educational pamphlets and other valuable information to help improve health.

The free health screenings include diabetes, blood pressure, vision, dental, and prostate. Physicians and staff from USC Family & Preventive Medicine department will be present and the SC HIV/AIDS Council will provide confidential HIV/AIDS screenings. There will also be educational opportunities to learn self-breast exam techniques for breast cancer awareness and prevention, applications and registration for the National Bone Marrow Registry, physical therapists from USC-DPT program, and USC-Genetics Counseling program present to perform simple pedigrees.

Children are also invited to attend the health fair. The Richland County Sheriff's Department will offer Kid's Print. This is a free service for parents, where photographs and fingerprints of children are taken and recorded in an effort to make locating them easier in the event of a tragedy such as runaways and kidnappings.

Event sponsors are the Student National Medical Association, USC Department Family and Preventive Medicine, Charles R. Drew Wellness Center and the Healthy SC Challenge.

For more information or if you are interested in covering/attending this event, please contact Curry Hagerty at the Healthy SC Challenge, (803) 737-4772 or April Grant at the USC School of Medicine, (864)3 46-6912.

Presidential Election Politics

You may have noticed that a presidential election is coming up this year.
However, what you may not know is all the candidates. Sure, there's Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, but who else will be on the ballot in November?

Every year, countless voters are surprised to see a lengthy list of candidates when they go to cast their ballots. So-called third party candidates are almost completely ignored by the main-stream-media (MSM) unless the point is to get a comment about the GOP or Democrat running.

America is about freedom and choice. The people decide who to elect, and we should not stand for subpar coverage of our election.

In South Carolina, the deadline to get names on the ballot is July 15, so until then here are the "other" candidates running for president that you may see in the voting booth.

Chuck Baldwin, Constitution Party Web site
Bob Barr, Libertarian Party Web site
Cynthia McKinney Green Party Web site
Ralph Nader, Independent Web site

Exercise all your rights this election.
Learn about and consider all the candidates running for office.