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Magdalena Gomez has simple goals. She wants to take care of her family, stay healthy and monitor her blood pressure.

As an unemployed, uninsured woman, however, these goals aren't always easy to achieve. Gomez spent her Saturday afternoon perusing the booths of Alpha Kappa Alpha's annual "It's a Family Affair: Minding your own Business, Health and Wealth" fair at the Marilyn J. Praisner Community Recreation Center, talking with vendors and getting her blood pressure checked.

"I want to make sure I keep myself well," she said on her way in to the health and wellness fair. "These things are so important, and we don't always take the time for them." Gomez, who lives in Fairland, picked up brochures and soaked up advice on how to care for her family, she said.

Residents like Gomez are precisely the reason the sorority holds the fair each year, the sorority sisters said. They're proud of the fact that their fair helps the community access information about staying healthy and making smart economic decisions, they say. Several of them talk about one woman in particular, who found out she had stroke-level blood pressure as a result of attending a past fair.

"They said, ‘Ma'am, you need to go to the hospital. Get to your doctor tomorrow,'" chapter Historian Cuvator Armstrong said. "They said she was this close. It's just so impressive."

The Gaithersburg alumni chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha plans the fair because it falls in line with their ideals of entrepreneurship, economic success, the black family, undergraduates and health, according to chapter Vice President Charlene Warren-Davis. They have held the event at the Praisner recreation center for three years, planners said, with Saturday's fair bringing out 28 exhibitors and 12 speakers.

"In these tough economic times, we need all the help and tips we can get to make it through," Warren-Davis said. The fair focused on preventative health, including a flu-shot station and pamphlets explaining how to detect diabetes.

Most visitors said they were healthy and had insurance, but they still appreciated the opportunity to get health-care tips from one location.

Hiam Hammad, a mother of two from Burtonsville, said the fair gives her an opportunity for personal interaction with health-care professionals, something not available from the plethora of information on the Internet.

"You simply get a little bit more of a one-on-one interaction," she said. "You get the actual representative from the office."

For D.C. resident Jack Koeppen, attendance is more about a busy parent having a one-stop shop for information.

"We're all so busy with day-to-day activities — I haven't had a physical in years — so this is a wonderful opportunity," he said, noting that he fit the fair in while his son was at an art class nearby. "It gives people a chance to stop and find out something about their health that they wouldn't know otherwise."