Encourage Patients to Visit Traveling Health Exhibit

An 18-wheeler brimming with family-oriented health exhibits may be in your neighborhood this summer. If the traveling exhibit stops near your town, encourage your patients to make a visit.

Total Family Health, an initiative spearheaded by the Discovery Health Channel in partnership with the AAFP, American Diabetes Association and other organizations, kicked off in early July in San Diego. As part of the initiative, a 53-foot tractor-trailer rig housing a traveling health exhibit will make stops at eight summer festivals and family destinations throughout the United States.

The mobile exhibit offers families health care resources and information in a unique and interactive setting -- all designed to help them achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle. So be sure to let your patients know if the exhibit will be stopping near your hometown.

This is the second year the Academy has participated in the initiative. The AAFP has provided extensive patient education materials, including 10,000 copies of the 2006 Family Doctor: Your Essential Guide to Health and Wellbeing and thousands of AAFP patient education brochures on such topics as exercise, weight control, breast cancer, childhood vaccines and prostate cancer. In addition, computer kiosks inside the big rig feature content from AAFP's online patient education resource, familydoctor.org.

The tour provides an opportunity to highlight family physicians and the importance of family medicine to the public.

Quarterly television specials and a strong online presence at the Discovery Health Channel Web site also are key components of the Total Family Health initiative.

The initiative is supported by PepsiCo's Smart Spot program.