WellBatavia Festival invites community to free health screenings

The WellBatavia Festival will be held from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Batavia City Hall, 100 N. Island Ave., where the public – and school-age children – are welcome to participate in free health screenings.

Sarah Greenhagen, a clinical professor of the doctoral physical therapy program at NIU, along with 5th Ward Alderperson Abby Beck, created the first event in 2017.

“It grew out of the Green Fair (on the Fox) in Batavia,” Greenhagen said. “I had an interest in increasing access to health care and health literacy for the citizens of Batavia and the surrounding community. Health care professionals get into the profession to help people, but it does not always align with what the person in front of us wants.”

Professionals don’t always know if their patient understands or is confident of the information provided, so they were motivated to increase health literacy through the WellBatavia Festival, Greenhagen said.

The event took a pause in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic and was offered in smaller ways in 2021, she said.

“We are back up to full steam now,” Greenhagen said. “What sets us apart from other health care fairs is that we are really motivated to make sure our patients and community members have information to make the best decisions about their health. ... We’re looking to broaden everybody’s understanding of what health is.”

WellBatavia screenings are set up as villages per bodily system to do a status check on areas such as memory or cognition, mental health, nutrition, hearing, speech and language.

When doctors check their patients for their heart function or a cognition test, Greenhagen said the screenings tend to be set up separately – in a siloed way – where the person’s full picture of their systems’ functioning is not apparent.

“We take a look at a lot of different systems,” Greenhagen said. “I partner with my graduate students in physical therapy, speech and language therapy and audiology students from NIU, who participate as well.”

In the past, attendance was 800-900 people and they provided health screenings for 250-300 people a year, which allowed WellBatavia to apply for grants, she said.

One of the grants was from AARP to study the walkability and accessibiity of the downtown.

On Saturday, Greenhagen said they expect to screen 300 people.

This year is the first time screenings are extended to speech and language screening for school-age children, she said.

Walk-ins are welcome, but signing up in advance for screenings is also available through the website, www.wellbatavia.com.

Vendors include Batavia United Methodist Church, Bethany Lutheran Church, Kane County, Health Department, Longevity Health and Fitness, Batavia Park District, The Conservation Fundation, The Batavia Counselor’s Collaboration, Genesis, Boj-e-bike, NIU, Juice Plus and Torus Therapy, according to the website.

Greenhagen is owner and managing partner of Catalyst Physiotherapy, Performance & Wellness.