The Health and Bioscience Committee of the Phoenix Community Alliance met on Thursday at Phoenix Public Market Café to discuss the first annual event at the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, a potential health pavilion in Hance Park and composting.
Slated to take place in February, the future event is meant to highlight the various aspects of the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, committee chair Lisa Perez said.
“We’re going to cover all the areas of who is on the campus, why [the faculty] came to the campus, why it was important to them,” Perez said.
The event will feature panels from four sections of the Phoenix Biomedical Campus: care, education, economics and science.
“The campus in and of itself has grown exponentially over the last ten years and has plans to grow even further,” Perez said.
Among the items discussed was the idea of an educational health pavilion in Hance Park that would host programs and exhibits promoting healthy lifestyles and education, said Larry Lazarus, a committee member.
“Our committee had a concept that it would be great if there was some sort of a health pavilion, centrally located in Hance Park, and maybe all the partners out there. Organizations that are doing healthy programming, including hospitals, could have one place, one central location,” Perez said. “It’s a concept that we like the idea of. It has the potential, but it’s a little ways down the way.”
Lazarus said the pavilion would include instructional exhibitions on computers, in-home health care and preventative care.
“Part of it would be just knowledge about what’s offered here in Arizona,” he said. “We’re one of the top research centers for Alzheimer’s disease and nobody knows that.”
Paul Gabriel, a former PCA member who has returned to the Health and Bioscience Committee, highlighted the importance of “Healthy Community Healthy You” in spreading awareness.
“Having lived in Europe for a while, it’s kind of interesting how everybody is so well-informed about healthy habits over there,” Gabriel said. “I think we should really push that here very much.”
In addition to healthy living, the committee discussed composting as a beneficial environmental practice.
“It’s creating a healthier environment by creating alternatives to food waste and alternatives to landfills, where you’re using up the land in a way that really doesn’t make any sense when you can compost,” Lazarus said. “It’s creating a better overall world environment.”
The next Health and Bioscience Committee meeting will be on December 8.
Contact the Reporter at shane.crowe@asu.edu.
