Kyle Okamura

Kyle Okamura

With the holidays approaching, it can be easy to neglect healthy habits. That’s why Hawaii Medical Assurance Association is inviting you to enjoy another kind of holiday pie at its Healthy for the Holidays Health Fair: Get Your Piece of the Wellness P.I.E. (Plan, Prevention, Implement, Intervention, Evaluation and Educate) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday (Oct. 19) at Tamarind Park in Bishop Square.

Sponsoring the fair is a collective of volunteers from the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii’s Young Professionals program.

“We just want to get information out to the community in regard to healthy living,” says Chamber of Commerce events coordinator and Young Professionals director Kyle Okamura.

The fair focuses on promoting a healthy lifestyle, and groups including the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, Umeke Market, Hi Town Fitness and YMCA will host booths. The event also will feature free health screenings, including BMI readings.

In addition to outreaching to the community, Okamura hopes the Young Professionals’ involvement will have an impact on the group’s volunteers.

“We thought that this (event) would be a very good fit for the Young Professionals program because health care costs are such an important facet of business – it is a major cost of running a business,” Okamura explains. “So we thought this is something young professionals should be aware of

– both in terms of business, as well as for the preventative side, where you’re talking about taking care of your health now.”

The Young Professionals program itself has charitable origins, too. Okamura founded the program in 2010 as a way to get young businesspeople more involved with the group. The program is designed to provide professional development tools to those who are in the early stages of their careers.

“We really wanted to build up the next generation of business leaders,” Okamura says. “We wanted to leverage all of the experience that some of these business leaders have and help them impart it on the next generation.”

Okamura says the HMAA community health fair is well aligned with his group’s goals.

“I really believe in preventative care,” Okamura says. “We just thought this is something really important for young professionals to know. That is what we are hoping to get out of (the fair) – to educate some of our young professionals and the community as a whole about preventative care.”

For more information on Healthy for the Holidays, visit hmaa.com or call 791-7589.