By Sym Posey | The Birmingham Times
Janet Maycock, President of the Druid Hills Neighborhood Association, took a look around the space inside Protective Stadium and marveled at the services available for nearby residents.
For the second year in a row, the Community Wellness Fair Presented by Protective included free sports physicals provided by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Sports & Exercise Medicine; comprehensive health screenings and wellness checks that included vitals and blood pressure checks and other services by nearly two dozen organizations.
“The focus of this wellness fair is for the people who live in these communities to be exposed to the plethora of services available to them,” said Maycock. “When you walk around you see the variety of services that are beneficial for the five neighborhoods [Central City, Norwood, Druid Hills, Fountain Heights, and Evergreen] that surround Protective. If they didn’t do this, a lot of these things nobody would know about it.”
Having partners like Protective Life and UAB “is great to have,” Maycock said. “It helps us feel like we are not alone anymore. We do have support. We are like a joint venture between the Northside communities.”
Shayla Aguillard, Community Engagement Coordinator for Protective Life said the company made a commitment to be a good neighbor.
“When our name was put on the stadium, we were very intentional, Protective was, to make sure that we gave back however we could. So, we created the Protecting Good Program.” Aguillard said.
Over 20 health vendors were on-site to provide access to wellness resources including UAB’s Live HealthSmart Alabama mobile wellness van; Children’s of Alabama, ¡HICA!, Birmingham Fire and Rescue, and Neighborhood Housing Services of Birmingham Works.
David Loper, Executive Director of the Protective Life Foundation said, the company’s mission “is to sell financial services products that protect people, that protect families, [but] … to have this opportunity to provide something of value to everyone in the Birmingham metro area, to receive free medical services and receive valuable information is something that makes a lot of sense to us.”
Aguillard said the outreach extends to other areas as well.
“We’ve given out 125 fortified roofs at basically no cost and we’re completing the rest of the program with doing repairs such as electrical, plumbing, HVAC” in collaboration with Neighborhood Housing Services of Birmingham and Habitat for Humanities, she said.
“We also read at Phillips Academy, and we’ve done work on Norwood Elementary School,” Augillard continued, “we’re very intentional about what we do as far as giving back to the neighborhood … we want to make sure our name is giving good vibes to the neighborhoods around us.”
