LIHUE — It was all fun and games on Saturday as at least 600 families — with keiki in tow — converged at Smith’s Tropical Paradise in Wailua for this year’s annual Wilcox Health Kids Summer Fest. This year’s festival
LIHUE — It was all fun and games on Saturday as at least 600 families — with keiki in tow — converged at Smith’s Tropical Paradise in Wailua for this year’s annual Wilcox Health Kids Summer Fest.
This year’s festival — now in its sixth year — marked the first time that the health- and safety-oriented event was held at the lush venue along the Wailua River.
In all, Hawaii Pacific Health Communications Manager Kristen Bonilla said about 600 people pre-registered for the event, but Wilcox Memorial Hospital and Kauai Medical Clinic President and Chief Executive Officer Kathy Clark estimated that nearly 1,000 people attended Saturday’s festival.
“I think the turnout is fantastic and the more kids we can touch to be healthier and safer the better it is,” Clark said. “To get kids to learn to be healthy early makes them very healthy adults, which will allow them to live longer and happier.”
The goal of the event was to bring awareness to island families about the many types of health and safety resources available to them and their children, said festival co-organizer Dr. Brigitte Carreau, a Wilcox Memorial Hospital pediatrician.
“It’s the summer, so we want them to be safe,” Carreau said. “There are a lot of fun stuff here but a lot of educational ones as well.”
Bonilla said festival organizers moved the venue from the Kauai Beach Resort to Smith’s Tropical Paradise to accommodate the growing number of people who are attending the event each year.
Festivities, which were largely in and around the venue’s luau house, included interactive games, demonstrations and information from 22 different vendors, representing a wide variety of health and safety organizations, nonprofits and law enforcement agencies on Kauai and Oahu.
These participating organizations included United Health Care, Hawaii Medical Service Association, Hawaii Life Flight, Kauai Medical Clinic, Kauai Fire Department, Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, and Hoola Lahui Hawaii.
Carreau said physicians were also on hand throughout the event to provide free sports physicals to children between 5 to 18 years old.
The need for some new vendors this year, such as the anti-bullying workshop provided by Olympic Training Center wrestler Michael Darby and Smile with ABC Network dancer Ashley Miller, are becoming increasingly important as island keiki encounter new issues and challenges, Clark said.
“As much as we would like to think that it doesn’t happen or think, ‘It would never happen to my kids,’ or, ‘My kids would never participate in anything like that,’ it happens and it’s becoming a bigger problem as time goes by,” Clark said. “Lets be aware and make things better for our kids because they’re our future.”
Time, she said, has also encouraged a lot sedentary activities, which is something that many vendors, along with medical professionals, are working to combat.
“In my day, we left home at 8 in the morning, we came back when the streetlights came on, we played, we were safe, we didn’t have helmets, and we didn’t have all of those needs,” Clark said.
“But kids nowadays are sitting in a house, playing on their iPads or iPods, watching TV, playing on game boxes and stuff like that, so this gets kids outside and shows them how to have fun.”
Festival emcee Dr. S. Kalani Brady, an internal medicine physician with the John A. Burns School of Medicine’s Department of Native Hawaiian Health, agreed and said it is important for parents to play an active role in their children’s life and health.
“When children are growing up, they argue and fight with their parents and some parents just stare and say, ‘My kid won’t listen to me anyway,’ but in fact, the children are modeling after their parents,” Brady said. “Even though they (children) fight with authority, which is how they establish their individuality, they listen to their parents. Parents — like grandparents — are perfect role models in teaching health and safety.”
• Darin Moriki, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-0428 or dmoriki@thegardenisland.com.
