- Slug: BC-CNS-Health and Wellness Festival. 530 words.
- 13 photos available (thumbnails, captions below).
By Sam Ballesteros
Cronkite News
PHOENIX – The Downtown Phoenix Farmers Market and the Phoenix Bioscience Core hosted the first Health & Wellness “Phoestival” with multiple guest speakers, a blood drive, cooking demonstrations and booths.
The Phoenix Bioscience Core is a 30-acre life science innovation district in downtown Phoenix that serves as a center for bio research and education. It boasts the highest concentration of research scientists in the state, from TGen, Exact Sciences and Phoenix’s major health care systems – Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Banner Health, Dignity Health and Valleywise Health – and more. It is the only area where all three of Arizona’s public universities – University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University and Arizona State University – have medical campuses.
The Phoenix Bioscience Core partnered with the farmers market to bridge a connection between research institutions and community members.
“There’s research and then there’s what’s happening at ground level, and trying to get the interaction between researchers and the people who live here is what the Phoestival of Health is about,” said Sara Anderson, who coordinated the event for Phoenix Bioscience Core.
Anderson said the goals for the festival were to be a resource for the community to live a healthier and more sustainable life and to provide a place where people could have conversations surrounding health, food and gardening.
“Health is not convenient, it’s not an easy process to stay healthy, but if you centralize it as a community focus, it gets a little easier,” Anderson said.
Chef Matthew Padilla, True Food Kitchen’s senior vice president of culinary, hosted a cooking demonstration with the UArizona Culinary Medicine Program using ingredients students chose from the farmers market.
“We are surrounded by so much unhealthy food that is easily accessible. The American diet has evolved into one that is based on convenience, but part of the demonstration was to show you can make healthy foods out of convenience as well,” Padilla said.
Dr. Shad Marvasti, founder of the UArizona Culinary Medicine Program, spoke alongside Padilla’s presentation to provide a medical perspective on healthy eating and to educate attendees on the health benefits of each ingredient.
“It’s a place where the community comes together, and for me, it makes sense to have all that, including demonstrations and Q&A sessions, so you can empower the public with all the tools they need to live a healthier and better life,” Marvasti said.
“It really democratizes the required information to view food not just as something to satiate you when you’re hungry but as something that could be looked at as medicine,” said Collin Thomas, a festival attendee.
The festival also hosted a blood drive.
“We have a lot of people who are health conscious and they are also altruistic, and this is like the ultimate mix, donating without knowing who it’s going to help,” said Mike Hashimoto, a volunteer with Vitalant, which ran the blood drive.
The farmers market and bioscience core plan to make the health festival an annual event.
For now, Saturday’s weekly farmers market at Fifth and McKinley streets is hosting monthly cooking demonstrations from the UArizona Culinary Medicine Program, blood drives every quarter and providing the opportunity to connect with local farmers.
