Barbershop to have health fair

A health fair at Razor’s Image barbershop will offer free blood pressure, cholestorol, diabetes, HIV and body mass index screenings next week.

The Bloomington Black Barbershop Health Initiative event will be 9 a.m. to noon April 28 at Razor’s Image barbershop, 223 Pete Ellis Drive, and is open to people of any age, race or gender.

Health Projects Manager Nancy Wooler said the city’s Community and Family Resources Department helped plan the event.

“African-American men have higher incidence of diabetes, hypertension, prostate cancer, than white men,” Woolery said.

Greg Tourner, chair for the Commission on the Status of Black Males in Indiana, also helped plan the local event.

“Some of the things that we did to prepare for this is we met with the Indiana Commission on the Status of Black Males,” he said. “We conference called to understand what our goals were that we wanted to accomplish with this barbershop health fair.”

Tourner said the state gave them the goal of having 100 participants in this year’s barbershop health fair.

However, Woolery said she will consider 30 to 50 participants a success.

“We’re hoping that we have a pretty good turnout,” Tourner said.

Tourner also said they have been working with several partners to sponsor the event, including IU Health Bloomington Hospital and the Omega Psi Phi fraternity at IU.

“We have testing supplies and everything being donated by IU Health, which is a big help,” Tourner said.

Omega Psi Phi sponsored a similar event earlier this year, Tourner said. This helped Bloomington to be selected as a participating city.

“In January, this past year, we ran a mock barbershop health fair partnering with Omega Psi Phi fraternity,” Tourner said. “We sent staffers in order to understand what we would endure in the April 28 event. So, that helped us get a leg up.”

Woolery said all testing is free, and no appointment is required. She also said they ask participants to fast for 12 hours before a cholestorol test.

“We’re just hoping that it’ll be successful and we’ll get a good turnout, and we’re trying to get the word around as much as possible,” Woolery said.