POINT PLEASANT BEACH — Point Pleasant Beach held its first Health Fair on Saturday, April 27, kicking off the first year of the borough’s involvement in the Mayors Wellness Campaign, a statewide effort to unite local governments with residents through community wellness initiatives.
“I’m big into the health and wellbeing of the community. I think it’s important, as a mayor, to extend this program…(Wellness) can really be anything; from the physical to the mental, arts, music — all of that falls under the ‘wellness’ umbrella,” said Mayor Doug Vitale, who brought the initiative to the borough.
The resources available at the health fair, which was held at Ocean Fire Co. 2, showed the diverse aspects of health and wellness from the physical to the mental and emotional. Shantell Hawthorne, program coordinator for the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide, told The Ocean Star the how resources provided by the society can help in mental health crises.
“The goal is really to end stigma and provide the community with a competent community care model; meaning we target every point in the community,” Hawthorne said. “We work with law enforcement, we work with teachers, we work with parents in the community; we provide them education when it comes to warning signs, risk factors and protective factors.”
Hawthorne also noted the national 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, a free resource intended to provide confidential emotional support, which can be reached by those in crisis by dialing 9-8-8.
Also providing mental health services was COMPASS (Creating Ocean Monmouth Prevention and Supports for Students), a New Jersey Statewide Student Support Services (NJ4S) program aiming to support public and charter school students and caregivers in Monmouth and Ocean Counties free-of-charge. The program is administered by Preferred Behavioral Health Group.
“COMPASS is a program in Ocean and Monmouth counties,” said Michelle Baxter of Preferred Behavioral. “Basically, we do prevention in schools; we go into the schools and help them with social-emotional learning. We teach kids how to help themselves if they’re sad, mad or angry.”
“We do drug abuse prevention, suicide prevention, anti-bullying…We also have LGBTQ acceptance and awareness; teaching children how to love themselves and love others in the world,” said Baxter.
On the physical health side, Giovana Zacatelco, patient navigator for the Ocean-Monmouth Health Alliance CEED (Cancer Education & Early Detection) Team, explained how exactly the team serves the community.
“We work with four different types of cancer: colon, prostate, breast and cervical,” she said. “We go out into the community to find community members that are either uninsured or under-insured that need these services, and we provide them free of cost. We also provide transportation if that’s a barrier.”
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