TCCL News & Events

In recognition of October as National Health Literacy Month, Tulsa City-County Library’s Ruth G. Hardman Adult Literacy Service is offering a free community health fair on Saturday, Oct. 24 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Zarrow Regional Library, 2224 W. 51st St.

Health literacy is the ability to read, understand and act on health information. Literacy skills are vital to a person’s health. In fact, literacy skills are a stronger predictor of a person’s health than age, income, employment status, educational level or race/ethnicity.

The community health fair will provide an opportunity for people to get information about a variety of health topics, take advantage of free health screenings, explore services available in the community and learn how to advocate for better health. Plus, attendees will learn how to communicate more clearly with doctors by asking questions.

Participating organizations include Hospice of Green Country, Life Senior Services, Metropolitan Urban League and OU-Tulsa Library.

At 2 p.m., the fair will feature a computer class titled “Online Health Information for Grownups.” The class will demonstrate how to find senior-friendly health and wellness information on the Internet.

The Tulsa Library Trust, George Kaiser Family Foundation and Tulsa City-County Library Staff Association Recycling Proceeds Fund are sponsoring the health fair. Call the literacy service at 596-7958 for more details.

How long is your digestive system? How fast does your heart beat? Kids ages 5 to 12 will learn the answers to these questions and more at Broken Arrow Library’s interactive health fair from 10 a.m. to noon on July 18.

Children will have the opportunity to visit interactive booths, put together a giant floor puzzle of the human body, color at the coloring station and tour a real-life ambulance.

Located at 300 W. Broadway, the library is offering the health fair to complement the traveling exhibition “Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America’s Women Physicians,” which is on display through July 24 at Central Library, Fourth Street and Denver Avenue, in downtown Tulsa.

Since the mid-1800s when Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn an M.D. degree in America, women have made enormous strides in every area of medicine and have achieved success in work once considered unsuitable for women.

The traveling exhibition spotlights the extraordinary story of how American women who wanted to practice medicine have struggled over the past two centuries to gain access to medical education and to work in the specialty they chose. The exhibition includes interactive kiosks providing educational activities, information about medical careers and biographies of outstanding women physicians.

Developed by the Exhibition Program of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office, the traveling exhibition was made possible by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women’s Health, with support from the American Medical Women’s Association. Tulsa City-County Library and the OU School of Community Medicine collaborated to bring the exhibit to Tulsa.

For more information about the children’s health fair, contact the Broken Arrow Library at 251-5359. For more information about “Changing the Face of Medicine” exhibit, call 596-7977 or visit www.tulsalibrary.org.