The Tucson Jewish Community Center and Tucson Medical Center will present the second annual Family Wellness Festival on Sunday, Oct. 18 from noon-4 p.m. at the Tucson J.
Pavilions throughout the J will be organized around themes such as safety, physical activity, health and wellness, food and literacy. Exhibitors will present interactive activities that promote healthy lifestyle choices.
The festival will demonstrate “how choosing healthy lifestyles can be easy and fun for the whole family,” says Mary Atkinson, director of wellness at TMC.
TMC will give away free bike helmets for kids and the Tucson Police Department will give away free booster seats.
This year’s event will include internationally and locally renowned speakers.
World kickboxing champion and international endurance athlete Leah Goldstein will be the keynote speaker. Goldstein, the author of “No Limits,” will recount the achievements, tragedies and triumphs that took her from North American kickboxing glory to Israel’s undercover police to an invitation to join the Israeli Olympic cycling team — and beyond. Goldstein will also offer a women’s bike clinic on Sunday morning.
Additional speakers include Tim Lohman, Ph.D., and Anne Marie Chiasson, M.D., M.P.H.
Lohman is a professor emeritus in the department of physiology at the University of Arizona and has worked in the areas of fitness and body composition for 35 years. He was the principal investigator of the BEST (Bone, Estrogen and Strength Training) study of post-menopausal women and co-principal investigator of an intervention designed to prevent obesity in Native American children. He helped design a weight loss program for adult women called Healthy Weight 4 Life. His current research focuses on long-term weight loss and he is writing a book on the obesity epidemic and weight loss. Lohman is a member of the International Olympic ad hoc body composition committee and is working with the American College of Sports Medicine and Human Kinetics on a body composition assessment certification program.
Chiasson, an integrative family physician, is assistant director of the Fellowship in Integrative Medicine at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. She is board certified in family medicine and in hospice and palliative medicine. Her most recent book is “Energy Healing: The Essentials of Self Care” (Sounds True, 2013). Among her other publications, she is co-author with Dr. Andrew Weil of “Self-Healing with Energy Medicine” (Sounds True, 2009).
As part of this year’s focus on literacy, the literacy pavilion will feature performances by Stories that Soar and Curious George from PBS Kids. Stories that Soar, one of five local nonprofit literacy groups that joined forces in 2011 to create Literacy Connects, includes a professional theatre ensemble that brings children’s original stories to life on the stage. The Tucson Festival of Books and the Arizona Daily Star have joined the festival this year as a featured sponsor of the literacy pavilion.
“We are excited about the new elements we are adding to build on our success from the 2014 event,” says Susan Frank, director of health and wellness at the J. “The J is the perfect setting to invite the public to enjoy an afternoon of education, fun and exposure to new ideas about how we can all live happier, healthier lives.”
