During a news conference Thursday at Irons Junior High School, Dr. Charles Bell, regional director for the Texas Department of Health, stressed the importance of flu vaccines.
When it comes to flu shots, the sooner the better, Bell said.
It takes up to two weeks after a vaccination for the body to fully immunize itself against the flu. And on average, about 20,000 people each year die from influenza-related illnesses.
Vaccination is an inexpensive but effective way to lower that statistic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Also on hand were Gwen Stafford, vice president for University Medical Center, and Cheryl Benoit, director of HealthSource, UMC's community wellness program.
HealthSource team members were providing wellness screenings, health risk assessments and flu vaccines to Lubbock Independent School District employees, Benoit said.
"What we're doing is work-site wellness, and LISD is one of our clients," she explained. "We go around to two LISD schools every Tuesday and Thursday during the month of October and we do blood draws, flu shots and health risk appraisals."
LISD employees receive confidential wellness profile reports, and the administration gets an aggregate report showing statistics that help identify health risks for the general population of employees, Benoit explained.
"No names are given to the administration," she said.
But if adverse medical trends show up in the statistical data, the LISD administration may choose to have HealthSource providers conduct follow-up education sessions, Benoit said.
"Some of the areas we report are cancer risks, heart disease risk, stress and nutrition," she said. "What that means to the administration is, if we have a large number of employees identified with low-fiber diets we would have to do some follow-up specific to education about increasing fiber in their diets."
HealthSource has a mobile medical screening van available for on-site examinations. The van can pull up outside a business, "and employees are only away from their work for about 5 minutes," Benoit said.
Screenings offered by the mobile unit include wellness screenings, hearing tests, vision screenings, pulmonary function testing, respirator-fit testing and drug screening (with a 24-hour turnaround)," she said.
For details call HealthSource at 743-1683.
Michael Gaffney can be contacted at 766-8796 or email@example.com
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal ©2014. All Rights Reserved.