Sandals Halcyon Beach Resorts, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Wellness, and Elderly Affairs, hosted a health fair in observance of breast cancer awareness month on October 22.
According to Shannelle Coore, HR manager at the resort, the health fair is held annually to offer various services to their team members.
“We are making it accessible for them to be able to access various health services and to get information on not just breast cancer, but sexual health, mental health, and the list goes on,” Coore says.
“A healthy workforce is very important, and that is first and foremost why we are doing this. Because if they’re not healthy, we know the real effects of having an unhealthy workforce, so we’re trying to ensure that we educate them as well, on the importance of being healthy, the measures they can take and also implement at home and in so doing further impact their family’s lives as well,” she added.
The HR manager stressed that the health fair was not just for line staff.
“It’s not structured to just line team members. This is for the entire employment body, who have been coming through during the day to participate and to get the necessary information,” she explained.
Shirlan Edward, family life educator at the Ministry of Health says that her department is pleased to bring some of the services that the Sandals staff may not be able to readily access.
“While this activity is part of breast cancer awareness month, we are still offering other services such as blood pressure, blood sugar testing. We have our nurses on board doing pap smears, breast screening, the infectious disease department is doing rapid testing, our dental Department offering screening for staff and our nutrition unit doing body measurements,” she went on to say.
The Sandals Halcyon health fair also offered an information table on environmental health while mental health nurses were also on hand to dialogue with staff on the subject.
Mental health awareness, Edward says, is particularly important as it relates to the workplace and in general.
“We are realising now that persons mental health is at risk, so we try our best to bring out this service. It does not matter what observance we have going on, we try to make mental health a big part of it and it’s very important because we know that persons get stressed out and have difficulty coping,” she emphasised.
For the Ministry of Health, the month of October has been filled with activities to mark breast cancer awareness month. These have included pink Fridays and according to Edward, the department stands ready to raise the awareness of breast cancer by collaborating with various schools and workplaces such as Sandals.
“At the ministries and at workplaces we are doing the screenings and we are just giving the public information to educate them more on breast cancer and early detection through screening.”
Several team members at Sandals Halcyon Beach Resorts availed themselves of the opportunity on October 22, with the health fair running from mid-morning until late afternoon.
