Crowds of St. Thomas-St. John residents and visitors mingled in Emancipation Garden Tuesday as health providers and service groups offered free screenings and advice promoting healthy living.

It was the second annual health fair sponsored by Sen. Ray Fonseca, chair of the 36th Legislature’s Health, Hospitals and Human Services Committee. Organizers said they hoped to glean insights from the numerous health screenings and referrals to inform talks among lawmakers and help them set spending priorities. “This initiative seeks to address critical public health challenges and improve the living conditions for numerous individuals,“ said a statement issued before Tuesday’s event.

Representatives from Health, Agriculture, East End Medical Center, the V.I. Center for Diabetes Excellence, and SkyMed air ambulance service were on hand to answer questions.
Many of those spending Tuesday morning in the park were seniors from St. Thomas and St. John. Musical performances by local students and an invited musician caused passersby to pause and linger nearby.

Over by the Health Department display, Kisha Williams showed Country Hamilton how to perform a water quality test using a prepackaged kit. Williams explained that the kit allows users to check for contaminants in their home supply.

Lakiah Meade, director of Maternal and Child Health, was among those on hand to greet the public. Although the services she offered seemed like a mismatch with elderly participants, she said the interactions were largely positive.
“We were able to provide grandmothers, grandparents with information for their grandchildren, especially for the WIC Program,” Meade said.
At the East End Medical Center exhibit, Dianne Morales offered blood pressure and other tests. “We’re also here if anyone wants an appointment; we can get them enrolled to see a provider,” Morales said.
Morales serves as the assistant to Medical Director Trisha Harris. Beside her was a table filled with brochures describing a slew of health conditions. “We also have information for every walk of life from 0 to 99 … We’re giving education on diabetes and … how to take your medications, how to see a physician on a regular basis; what your numbers should look like,” she said.
Early visitors to the health fair were treated to lunch before boarding vehicles for the trip back to their respective homes. Volunteer Sandra Colburne from the Institute for Social Change said her group arranged transport for seniors living in Pilgrim Terrace.
Part of the group’s mission is to engage older adults in community-based activities. “We focus on the elderly in the community; today we had the health fair that was held by Senator Fonseca,” she said.
Fonseca, host of Tuesday’s fair, relaxed in a chair in the David Monsanto Bandstand, stepping to the announcer’s mic to draw tickets for a raffle prize. “The turnout was awesome — very hot and humid but it was an excellent turnout,” he said.
Since these fairs began, he said, they have welcomed residents from St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John with the goal of keeping the community healthy and aware of the services available to them.

As heavy rains and hurricane forecasts remind the Virgin Islands of the season’s uncertainty, a different kind of emergency training just wrapped up underwater. Local coral disturbance Strike Teams — volunteer divers already known for their fight against coral disease — completed a pilot program designed to turn them into “reef first responders,” ready to stabilize reefs after storms, vessel groundings, or other sudden damage.
“This is like building a firefighter squad for our coral reefs,” said Jordan Schneider, president of Ceiba Strategies, which manages the Strike Team program for the Department of Planning and Natural Resources. “We’re preparing divers to jump into action when reefs need help most.”
Strike Teams have been on the frontlines since 2019, hand-treating corals sickened by Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease with underwater doses of amoxicillin. Their work has preserved countless colonies, even as SCTLD wiped out much of the Caribbean’s reef-building corals. With fewer susceptible corals left and new threats looming — bleaching, invasive species, and debris from storms — DPNR has broadened the teams’ mission.

The two-day pilot training recently held at Butler Bay on St. Croix and Coki Bay on St. Thomas brought together 21 divers, some with professional coral restoration backgrounds and others trained through the Strike Team program. On land, they practiced belt transects, simulating reef surveys with markers. In the water, they carried out full damage assessments, geotagged coral fragments, and learned to stabilize broken colonies using lift bags and marine epoxy. “The corals we re-secure are often the survivors — the ones that have made it through years of bleaching and disease,” explained diver Logan Williams. “Saving them strengthens the whole reef.”
Training also included safe transport techniques for rare or ESA-listed species, which may need to be moved to nurseries to preserve genetic diversity. That skill was quickly put to use. Just days after the session, Strike Team divers were called to St. Croix, where a vessel set adrift during Hurricane Erin had smashed into an endangered elkhorn coral colony before washing ashore. The incident left behind debris now under DPNR investigation, but also offered an early, real-world test of the team’s new skills.
Local partners, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Coral Restoration Foundation, CORE Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Thriving Islands, East End Marine Park, Sea Grant, and the University of the Virgin Islands, all helped shape the curriculum. Their goal is to create a territory-wide coral emergency response network — a collaborative effort that will allow reefs and the communities that rely on them to recover more quickly after damage.

Schneider said the training is only a beginning. “We’ll keep refining the program as we respond to more incidents, and my hope is to expand it to include more local divers,” he said. “The stronger our network, the faster our reefs — and the communities that depend on them — can recover.”
Community members who see a grounded vessel or reef damage are urged to contact DPNR’s Coral Disturbance Response Coordinator, Courtney Tierney, at courtney.tierney@dpnr.vi.gov.