Walgreens Tour Touts Health Screenings

It's officially flu season. Walgreen Co. today begins its Walgreens Wellness Tour, offering free health screenings.

Next best thing to a house call

The tour—a first for the drugstore chain—will hit 45 markets with nine sponsors and a portable lab that offers five screenings: bone density, total cholesterol, blood pressure, glucose and body mass index. The free screenings take about 30 minutes and are worth $100.

Two trained medical technicians travel with the vehicle and conduct tests. There is a health and beauty area and a kids' corner outside the vehicle.

Visitors get a sample bag with educational material from Walgreens and samples from the tour's nine sponsors: Colgate (Total toothpaste); Glaxo SmithKline (Oscal calcium supplement); Hershey Foods (Smart Zone Bar); Kimberly Clark (Huggies diapers); L'Oréal Paris (skin care); Novartis (Benefiber fiber supplement, Gerber baby products and blood-pressure pharmaceuticals); Procter & Gamble (Actonel osteoporosis medication and Prilosec OTC); Roche (Accu-Check glucose monitoring system); and Pfizer (Listerine).

Most stops are scheduled for Walgreens stores, although the vehicle may also visit event sites in some markets. Marketing Werks, Chicago, handles the tour.

Deerfield, IL-based Walgreens has 4,582 stores in 44 states with sales of $37.5 billion; another 450 stores are slated to open in 2005.

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