Tips for Hosting a Monthly Health Series

As the country continues to work on putting the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, people have become keenly focused on overall health. They are hungry for reliable information about eating well, exercising, building immunity naturally, disease prevention, and more. Now that public gatherings are happening again, this interest in wellness might make it an ideal time for your senior center to host a series of health talks.

These types of events are a great opportunity to bring older adults, health care professionals, and community leaders into your center. They can be inexpensive to host, while still providing a valuable service to the public.

Planning a Health Series for a Senior Center

Here are a few factors to consider as you begin planning for a health series:

• Frequency: First, think about how often you would like to host a speaker. Many organizations find a monthly gathering to be ideal, but quarterly could work too. Think about the labor and expenses you’ll incur and use that as your guide.
• Day and time: Setting and sticking with a consistent day and time for the event also helps. For example, hosting a luncheon on the second Tuesday of every month helps potential attendees plan. Also take time into account. If your target audience is older adults, morning or mid-afternoon might be better than evening, especially in the winter when it gets dark outside earlier.
• Fees: While these types of events are often offered to the community free of charge, if you offer a meal you may need to assess a small fee. Another option to help avoid charging attendees is to solicit sponsors. You might target a few overall series sponsors, such as a local retirement village or hospital, or find different sponsors based on the topic to be presented.
• Registration: You’ll also need to decide whether you will require people to make a reservation. If you are serving a meal, preregistering will be important. You can accept reservations by phone or create an event on your Facebook page. For those who prefer an online registration option, this article about event registration tools has some suggested platforms you might find useful.

Finally, you’ll want to recruit health care professionals to share their knowledge. Here are a few suggestions to get started.

Ideas for Selecting Health Care Series Topics

The topics you select for your presentations will be critical for the success of your series. Here are a few suggestions to make your program unique and interesting:

• Dental care and the connection to overall wellness
• Tips for seniors to select a primary care physician
• Understanding Medicare
• Menu planning tips to prevent disease
• Hiring and supervising an in-home caregiver
• Local fitness programs for older adults
• Important health screenings by age and gender
• How to improve your quality of sleep and why it’s important
• Healthy ergonomics for computer and tablet users
• Natural remedies for managing osteoarthritis
• Senior-friendly ways to manage stress
• Inflammation-fighting foods to incorporate into your diet
• Low-impact forms of exercise you can do year-round

One final tip to make planning go more smoothly is to check around town to see what, if any, health series you might be competing with. You’ll want to make sure to avoid scheduling and topic conflicts.

Promoting Your Health Series

When it comes time to promote each event in your health series, you’ll likely want to utilize traditional and digital avenues. The Events tab on your Facebook page is one option,  another is to send out emails to your members and supporters lists, and don't forget to put it into your print newsletter, too.  Don’t forget to also garner attention from media sources. To connect with local print and broadcast media, follow the advice in How to Write a Media Release to Promote a Center Event.

Updated on 03-21-2024