cardiovascular disease

21 people stand on a stage holding a plaque and novelty award check

Mecklenburg County health program wins national competition

March 11, 2019 by Yen Duong

Mecklenburg County health program wins national competition - North Carolina Health News

Village HeartBEAT also won a $500,000 prize for fighting cardiovascular disease risk factors among its Charlotte/ Mecklenburg participants.

By Yen Duong

Wanda Dupree just wanted celebratory ice cream.

But while wondering which flavor would best mark the end of a 16-week health challenge, she ran into her chair aerobics coach, who talked her out of the treat.

“I realized that this wasn’t just about this challenge. This was an initiative for us to make lifestyle changes and be able to save our lives […and] take that to our community,” Dupree, a middle-aged woman who participated in Mecklenburg County Health Department’s Village HeartBEAT program, said. “It’s definitely a community because I didn’t get that ice cream.”

This past year, over 24,000 Charlotteans like Dupree participated in walks, aerobics classes, nutrition and cooking courses, smoking cessation classes and other events with Village HeartBEAT, a health intervention program run in collaboration with over 60 African-American and Hispanic/Latino faith-based organizations.

Their hard work paid off. Village HeartBEAT won $500,000 from the national “Healthiest Cities, Healthiest Counties” competition, sponsored by the Aetna Foundation, the American Public Health Association and the National Association of Counties. On Feb. 12, leaders including Governor Roy Cooper celebrated the win at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center but cautioned there’s still more work to be done.

A group of people sitting in rows in an auditorium — Part of the crowd at the Village HeartBEAT recognition event, including Cheryl S. Emanual, bottom left, who created the program. Photo credit: Yen Duong

“Village HeartBEAT is a national example of how the local public health [department] and the community, particularly faith-based community, can work well to really tackle some serious issues affecting minority communities,” said Dr. Garth Graham, president of the Aetna Foundation. “The kinds of things that Village HeartBEAT has done on the local level is what we need to see nationally.”

Village HeartBEAT: a national example

Heart disease is the second leading cause of death, behind cancer, for North Carolinians, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the U.S. overall, African Americans are almost twice as likely to die from heart disease or stroke than white Americans. Risk factors like smoking, high blood pressure and obesity affect African-Americans over 50 more than their white counterparts.

Village HeartBEAT, which started in 2012 with seven participating Charlotte churches, aims to address those risk factors through a 10-month program culminating in a 16-week health and fitness competition. That first year, outreach events reached over 10,000 participants, according to a Mecklenburg County report.

Each year, Village HeartBEAT, which stands for Building Education & Accountability Together, expands to more faith-based organizations. Its success is a “proof of concept,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

“This was an example of something that can be scaled up [and] that can be taken to other communities,” Benjamin said. “They got to put their personal slant on it but other communities can replicate this model.”

Using the faith community to reach people

Village HeartBEAT is one of many Mecklenburg County initiatives to reduce rates of obesity and tobacco use and increase physical activity, along with a new farmers market, bringing healthy food to food deserts and events which close streets to cars allowing for people to walk and bike in the street.

“Public health is never going to be the complete safety net that our communities need,” said Mecklenburg County Health Director Gibbie Harris. “How ever we can provide services through our community partners, that’s what we need to be about.”

table shows rates of obesity, no physical activity, smoking, blood pressure, cholesterol — Table courtesy: Mecklenburg County State of the County Health Report, 2016.

Of the roughly million residents in Mecklenburg County, about 20 percent live in its “public health priority areas,” with high levels of poverty where there are few high school graduates, according to the Mecklenburg State of the County Health Report. Village HeartBEAT targets these locales, enlisting church congregants to lead their peers in the health challenges.

“The faith community is a centerpiece of most communities,” Benjamin said. “These folks have decided that they’re going to be the chief health strategists for their community and they worked hard to make that happen.”

Harris seconded, “They are in the community day in and day out; their connections with the people in the community are incredible. This is an incredible recognition of the work that this community has done to improve the health of our folks who are most impacted by health issues.”

Winning the national competition

The national competition for small to mid-size cities and counties gave out $1.5 million in prize money to support health programs.

“We were trying to look for and highlight and uplift […] organizations that are making an impact in our community,” Graham said. “We wanted to be able to recognize those folks who were the soul of the community.”

Village HeartBEAT won the mid-size division. Smoking rates decreased from 17.4 percent to 13.9 percent and obesity rates dropped from 70 percent to 64.7 percent in the target areas over two years, according to the Healthy Cities, Healthy Counties national competition website.

shows a group of people carrying a banner and walking down the street — Village HeartBEAT churches participate in the 2017 Martin Luther King, Jr. day parade. Photo courtesy: Village HeartBEAT

“We were able to see the impact that you all were doing […with] the kinds of things that quite frankly are big challenges for us at the national level,” Graham said. “And you all are doing it here.”

Three other areas in North Carolina were among the top 50 finalists in the competition. Along with Village HeartBEAT, Chatham County was among 10 winners of a smaller $25,000 prize announced in January. Durham and Cabarrus counties received an honorable mention for that award. Davidson County was also a finalist.

“It’s time for North Carolina to do it.”

After congratulating the program, Cooper used his time at the podium to stump for Medicaid expansion, which he touted in his state of the state address in February. In reference to bills for Medicaid expansion, Cooper listed benefits of a “$4 billion per year infusion into our economy,” reducing homelessness, lowering health care premiums and adding tens of thousands of health care jobs.

“We think this is one of the very best ways to ensure a healthy North Carolina, to make sure that people have the health insurance they need,” Cooper said in a press conference immediately after his speech. “And aside from the health care benefits, this is a common sense economic development project. We’re already paying federal tax money to Washington. We need to have it come back to North Carolina.

“This is something 37 states have already done. It’s time for North Carolina to do it.”

Near the end of the event, Mecklenburg County Commissioner Vilma D. Leake also stumped for a cause. She urged private and public employers to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour as Mecklenburg County did this month.

“Government does not want to deal with you,” Leake said. “They don’t want to provide any funds for you to do the things that’s necessary. I challenge us to do the right thing at the right time for the right people.”

When Wood Smoke Poses Risks

January 10, 2018 by Catherine Clabby

When Wood Smoke Poses Risks - North Carolina Health News

Insights are growing about when wood smoke -- indoors and outside -- can be dangerous to some.

By Catherine Clabby

In the darkest and coldest winter nights, few things can bring more cheer than sitting in front of a big fire.

But for some, it can do harm.

Wood smoke, indoors and out, can be hazardous to people living with asthma and other chronic health problems, something Kiana Redd saw while growing up in Wake County.

Her mother, a nurse, gave up on trying to light a fire in their family home. Every time she did, two brothers with asthma would start coughing and have trouble stopping.

Redd, the Healthy Homes program coordinator in Orange County, now understands why.

“Wood smoke is an irritant for someone with asthma, just as much as cigarette smoke. Sometimes worse,” said Redd, who is trained in detecting health hazards in homes and educating families on how to reduce them.

The ways in which wood smoke poses environmental health risks are better understood than ever before. Luckily so are the steps to prevent harm.

Downsides to smoke

Wood smoke is much more than that whiff of something pleasant in the air. It’s a combustion emission whose plumes carry a complex mix of gases and particles into the air.

The gases can include unhealthy benzene and formaldehyde and the particles can be small enough to be classified as particulate matter. The smallest particles — those with diameters of 10 micrometers or below — can travel deep into people’s lungs and stir trouble.

Outdoors too

Public health experts are also paying increasing attention to health risks from wildfire smoke. For one, these events are expected to increase as global temperatures continue to rise with climate change.

This is not an abstraction in North Carolina. Thirty fires scorched 80,000 acres in drought-stricken counties in western counties in October and November 2016, the worst rash of fires on record. The resulting smoke particle pollution locally reached levels dangerous to everyone, not only people with compromised health.

Meteorological conditions produced an inversion layer: warm air trapped dense, colder air near the ground, slowing the smoke’s dispersal, especially from valleys and other lower ground.

shows satellite image of western NC, with smoke from wildfires being blown east and south — From their orbit high above Earth, NASA satellites captured images of the wildfires that erupted in the Southeastern US. This image was taken in August of 2016.

Peden, the UNC pulmonologist and researcher, is among the scientists trying to better understand the biology that produces some people’s ill health effects from wood smoke. They are also looking for ways for firefighters and others to protect themselves from the hazards.

In specially designed chambers in Chapel Hill, his research team and colleagues conduct studies where people exert themselves on stationary bikes while exposed to wood smoke generated by wood stoves.

The researchers are exploring the effects of a gene that seems to influence a person’s reaction to wood smoke. They are also testing whether a type of the nutritional supplement vitamin E (gamma tocopherol) can reduce inflammation in airways that exposure to wood smoke can produce.

If it works, a new treatment might be in the works to help people with asthma, and those without it.

New Awareness Day Aims to Help North Carolinians Learn about High Blood Pressure

May 18, 2017 by Leah Asmelash

New Awareness Day Aims to Help North Carolinians Learn about High Blood Pressure - North Carolina Health News

Even after having a stroke, many people don't fully appreciate the importance of controlling their blood pressure.

By Leah Asmelash

“Today, the message is check, check, check your blood pressure,” said Rep. Becky Carney, an eight-term legislator who had suffered sudden cardiac death in her legislative office in 2009.

Carney, who has since been a champion for heart health, was making introductory comments to open a high blood pressure awareness day at the North Carolina General Assembly on Wednesday.

Organizers encouraged everyone at the legislative complex to check their blood pressure for free.

Almost thirty percent of all people dying in North Carolina have cardiovascular disease, which includes hypertension. People often have no overt symptoms of high blood pressure, which makes regular blood pressure checks important.

Rep Becky Carney (R-Charlotte), center, does introductions during the Hypertension Awareness Day event at the NC General Assembly. She's joined by Rep. Larry Yarborough (R-Roxboro) and Dr. Forrest. Photo credit: Leah Asmelash — Rep Becky Carney (D-Charlotte), center, does introductions during the Hypertension Awareness Day event at the NC General Assembly. She’s joined by Rep. Larry Yarborough (R-Roxboro) and Dr. Brian Forrest. Photo credit: Leah Asmelash

“Blood pressure is the single, most important indicator of heart disease and stroke,” said Brian Forrest, a hypertension specialist.

He said that people must not only check their blood pressure regularly and know what it is, but work to lower it to reduce the risk of stroke or heart disease.

Anna Bess Brown, executive director of Justus-Warren Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention task force, organized the event to both raise awareness of the dangers of hypertension, “the silent killer,” and to show support for House Bill 411.

The new bill, which has passed the state House of Representatives and is currently in the Senate, would make the third Wednesday in May Hypertension Awareness Day. The task force introduced the bill to put hypertension on people’s radar and allow the task force to do awareness days every year.

Brown was moved to action when she learned that people who had strokes did not realize the relationship between stroke and high blood pressure.

“It just astounded me,” Brown said. “Here they are, they’ve had a stroke, they’re under doctors’ care and they still don’t understand the connection.”

That’s what Wednesday’s event aimed to do: help people with high blood pressure understand the condition’s health implications. That’s what HB 411 aims to do, too.

“A lot of people just think, ‘Oh, if I’m taking medication, you know, I’m okay,’” Brown said. “But no, you need to monitor it, you need to take some steps to stop smoking, or increase your physical activity, eat better. There are things you can do.”

Competition for Heart Patients Gears Up in Raleigh

March 5, 2017 by Thomas Goldsmith

Competition for Heart Patients Gears Up in Raleigh - North Carolina Health News

In the same week, Rex Health Care opens a new cardiac center, WakeMed announces a partnership with Duke Health Raleigh to serve heart patients.

By Thomas Goldsmith and Rose Hoban

The heart and vascular hospital opened today by UNC Rex Healthcare will not only provide high levels of care for its targeted patients, but will also free up some 100,000 square feet of space at its neighboring facility, officials said at a recent opening ceremony.

The new five-story building contains 306,000 square feet of space and has 114 patient rooms. It will be booked solid from day one, said Dr. James P. Zidar, physician in chief at UNC Health Care heart and vascular services.

During the opening ceremonies Thursday, Zidar was one of several speakers who recounted the hospital’s long planning period, which started when David Strong was president of Rex, before he joined Orland Health in 2015.

“Perhaps, David, we didn’t think big enough,” Zidar joked during the event, which Strong attended.

Bob Thomas, chairman of the UNC Rex Healthcare Board of Trustees, said the opening of the heart and vascular building marked a new chapter for Rex, which dates its beginnings to 1894 in downtown Raleigh. A new behavioral health clinic, the result of a $2.5 million gift from an anonymous donor, was described as one of the first beneficiaries of the “repurposing” of space made available by the move of heart and vascular services into the new building.

“It will make the emergency department more efficient and safer,” Thomas said.

Emergency departments across the state have seen behavioral health patients piling up for hours and sometimes days while in need of specialized treatment.

Competition for hearts heats up

In a development in the same sphere, Duke Health announced on Valentine’s Day a collaboration in heart care services with WakeMed Hospital. The effective date for the joint effort, called called Heart Care Plus+, was March 1.

“This is not a merger between the two organizations,” Duke officials said in a press statement at the time of announcement. “Duke Health and WakeMed will continue to operate independently apart from the collaboration and maintain their own identities.”

The confluence of events is reminiscent of the 2010 tug-of-war between WakeMed and Rex largely over who controlled the profitable cardiac care market in Raleigh. A large group of cardiac doctors defected to Rex soon after WakeMed created specialty clinics and operating rooms to house them, spurring the public conflict between the two Raleigh institutions.

Eventually, members of the General Assembly mediated a resolution to the dispute.

That episode, and this, illustrate the high stakes for attracting cardiac patients.

“These are services that are very high margin,” said Harvard health economist Ashish Jha. He noted cardiac care is among the mostly highly reimbursed by private insurance and by Medicare, the federal program which provides insurance for seniors.

Both Rex and their competitors across town have ramped up cardiac services to take advantage of that robust reimbursement.

“The way hospitals make the margins that they need, to compensate for taking care of Medicaid patients or taking care of uninsured patients is through their private payers,” Jha said. “In general, hospitals will do well on their private payers and that’s how they recover costs and manage to stay afloat.”

Report Points to Disparity in Rural/Urban Life Expectancy

February 9, 2016 by Taylor Sisk

Report Points to Disparity in Rural/Urban Life Expectancy - North Carolina Health News

A national advisory committee finds that health disparities between rural and urban communities have widened. Similar disparities are found in North Carolina.

By Taylor Sisk

A recent report by the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services indicates that life expectancy in rural American communities is consistently lower than in urban areas.

The NACRHHS, chaired by former Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, provides recommendations on rural health issues to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A webinar was held Jan. 28 to discuss the results of its most recent report, “Mortality and Life Expectancy in Rural America: Connecting the Health and Human Service Safety Nets to Improve Health Outcomes over the Life Course.”

rural barns — Image courtesy Donald Lee Pardue, flickr creative commons

The report’s authors find that while life expectancy at birth for the nation’s population as a whole has been increasing for more than a century, in the past few decades the disparity between rural and urban communities has widened.

In fact, some rural counties have experienced declines in life expectancy during this period. The greatest disparities are found in Appalachia.

Data presented last year by NC Child (see interactive map below) indicates similar disparities in North Carolina.

“This rise in death rates is unique since the flu epidemic of 1918,” Wayne Myers, a committee member and former head of the federal Office of Rural Health Policy, told webinar participants. “There has not been such a large loss of life expectancy of such sustained duration in the industrial world.”

Myers called the rural/urban disparities “an equal opportunity tragedy,” in that they’re found in both majority-black as well as predominantly white communities.

Poverty bound

The committee found that almost all counties with the greatest declines in mortality are rural. From 2005 to 2009, the mortality rate in rural counties was 13 percent higher than in metro counties. (Mortality rate is the number of deaths that occur per 1,000 people in a given place and time.)

Rural/urban disparities in life expectancy also widened, and life expectancy worsened in the most rural areas.

According to NC Child’s data, life expectancy in Wake County in 2014 was 81.4 years; in the largely rural eastern county of Robeson, it was 74.2 years; and in rural Western North Carolina’s Swain County, it was 73.1.

Wake County men lived, on average, 79.3 years; Robeson County men, 71 years; and Swain County men, 70.5.

Wake County women had a life expectancy of 83.2; Robeson County women, 77.3 years; and Swain County women, 75.7.

The NACRHHS report also underscored that as poverty rates increase, life expectancy declines – and more so in rural than in urban communities.

Meanwhile, census data indicates that poverty is on the rise – again, in rural more than in urban communities. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey found that nearly 2.6 million children in rural areas are in families with incomes below the federal poverty level ($24,250 for a family of four).

The child poverty rate of 26 percent in rural communities was up from the 1999 rate of 19 percent. The rate in urban areas rose in that same period from 16 percent to 21 percent.

In Wake County 14.3 percent of children live below the poverty level; in Robeson, the rate is as high as 46.6 percent; and in Swain, 28.8 percent.

This story was made possible by a grant from the Winston-Salem Foundation to examine issues in rural health in North Carolina.

‘Older, poorer, sicker’

In its report, the NACRHHS suggests several sources of the rural/urban disparity in life-expectancy rates:

“In general, rural America is older, poorer, and sicker than urban America, all of which contribute to the rural-urban mortality gap. Because rural Americans are on average older than their urban counterparts they are disproportionately represented in the Medicare population.”

In addition, a number of chronic diseases affect rural residents at higher rates. Cardiovascular disease is among them. Smoking is another primary issue.

The good news regarding smoking, said the NACRHHS’s Alana Knudson, co-director of the University of Chicago’s Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis, is that there has been an overall decrease in the past decade in adolescents who smoke. The bad news is that kids in rural areas are smoking at about twice the rate of their urban counterparts.

Rates of obesity, heart disease and cancer are high in Robeson County relative to the state average and it has the highest smoking rate in the state.

Targeted funding

“By looking at national trends, which are not good, we have missed the fact that some parts of the country are not simply not gaining in life expectancy, they are actually seeing life expectancy decline,” said NACRHHS chair Musgrove.

Throughout the past 25 years, the committee states in its report, the Department of Health and Human Services has addressed access to health care in rural communities by such measures as financing community health centers and providing differential reimbursement for low-volume, rural health care providers.

“However, access to care alone is not enough to fully address complex health outcomes including mortality and life expectancy of populations,” they write. “Approaches must strengthen the health care delivery system while increasing integration of primary, specialty, substance abuse, and mental health services with human services including economic development, employment, housing, transportation, and education.”

Myers reiterated this, saying, “A lot of the issues, I would argue, underlying both the rural/urban disparity and the rising death rates in rural areas are not within the traditional purview of the [DHHS] secretary.”

Efforts to address these issues, he said, must include the secretaries of Commerce, Labor, Justice and Education.

Among the NACRHHS’s recommendations are calls to increase federal support of “research projects that examine behavioral health and primary care integration in rural communities to expand the evidence base for these efforts.” Another recommendation is for the DHHS secretary to direct the National Institute on Drug Abuse to conduct research into the rural/urban implications of opioid use and overdose, including heroin.

The committee also calls for an increase in funding for training primary care providers and emergency medical providers in the use of opioid overdose-treatment drugs, including naloxone.

The report states that while “rural communities face higher levels of health disparities, the funding to address this disparity is allocated on a population basis, leaving rural programs significantly underfunded. The Committee suggests that HHS consider need as a significant factor in future allocation of public health and prevention funding.”

This story was made possible by a grant from the Winston-Salem Foundation to examine issues in rural health in North Carolina.

Middle-schoolers Cassidy Ward and DeAndre Foote consider soft drink options.

Kids Find Their Own Way to Healthy Living

September 1, 2015 by Editor

Kids Find Their Own Way to Healthy Living - North Carolina Health News

A program to help middle-schoolers find their own way toward healthy food choices is finding success.

This story was originally published in February 2012, but has been updated with new information.

By Taylor Sisk

When you’re a seventh-grader, the world is your oyster. Or maybe it’s your carrot stick. But more probably, it’s your Twix.

Teaching kids to make their own wiser health choices at an age when everything seems possible – when the notion of charting one’s own path is just taking seed in the psyche – is the foundation of the Motivating Adolescents with Technology to Choose Health, or MATCH, program.

The switch from Twix to a carrot, said the program’s founder, has got to be a kid’s own choice.

“We’re the most successful public school-based child obesity intervention in the literature” said Tim Hardison, who created the program while he was still making a living standing in front of kids teaching every day.

Leaders from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust decided this child-focused approach to healthy living was worth pursuing further and in 2012 donated funds to expand it from six eastern counties to 11.

Now, three years later, the program has published results showing its continued success. This year, MATCH was designated as a “research-tested” intervention, the most rigorous classification for a school-based program.

Not overburdening

MATCH was launched in 2006 in Martin County, in rural eastern North Carolina, by Hardison, who now directs the program under the auspices of the Pediatric Healthy Weight Research and Treatment Center at East Carolina University. Hardison works closely with Suzanne Lazorick, a PHWRTC pediatrician and obesity researcher.

In September 2006, Hardison, then a seventh-grade science teacher at Williamston Middle School, read a study published by Harvard University researchers that said Martin County had the shortest life expectancy of any county in North Carolina. He wanted to know why, and what he could do about it.

He learned that Martin County was 87 percent above the state average in the incidence of diabetes and also above average in cardiovascular disease.

He also learned about body mass index, which measures body fat. He introduced the idea to his students, then had them test themselves. Sixty-four of 110 kids were determined to be either overweight or obese, meaning that as they grew older they would be at risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea and more.

Hardison wanted to work with his students to help them live healthier lives, but knew that for any new curriculum to be effective it would have to be integrated into what schools already offered.

“I knew that if we were going to try to address childhood obesity through the schools,” he said, “we needed to create a program that would work within the school day, within their standard course of study, so we were not adding additional responsibilities to an overburdened teacher’s daily schedule.”

“BMIs are not published at the end of the year, but test scores are,” said Hardison, who added that teachers need to buy into the program for it to be successful. “So you have to create a model that’s a win-win for them.”

Thus, MATCH was born.

‘Up to them’

MATCH combines physical activity, nutritional education and information technology, while adhering to the seventh-grade N.C. Standard Course of Study.

“We have had fantastic results,” said April Rose, a physical education and health teacher at Pamlico County Middle School. “The teachers love it because it follows the essential standards and outlines lesson plans for the students.”

In math class, students learn how to calculate their own BMIs. They keep exercise logs and enter them into Excel spreadsheets.

“The way you make change in a household is you educate a seventh-grader, arm them with knowledge, and then you can’t shut them up.”

“You show them that [spreadsheets] can help them do their math,” Hardison said, “and they think it’s pretty neat.”

They keep journals, develop their own wellness goals and self-assess their progress.

“We don’t single kids out as being overweight or obese,” Hardison said. Everyone is given the same lessons on healthy eating and being active.”

“We bring this whole wellness idea into the forefront of a kid’s mind, and everything ties together,” he said. “It’s interdisciplinary.”

Hardison said he believes a fundamental difference between MATCH and other wellness programs is that he only minimally involves parents.

“Kids are a little rebellious at this age,” he said. “If they think they know something their parents don’t, they’re liable to use it. “The way you make change in a household is you educate a seventh-grader, arm them with knowledge, and then you can’t shut them up.”

Lazorick likes the results: As the program has expanded, she said, it’s common that 50 to 75 percent of students who were overweight at the start of the program weigh less after they finish. More than 75 percent of students have improved cardiovascular fitness, as measured by a fitness test.

And she agrees that seventh grade is a good time to introduce this curriculum.

“I believe that there is something special about the young-adolescent age, developmentally, what’s going on psychologically and cognitively,” she said. “They’re wanting to separate from their parents.”

“What we’re trying to do is empower these kids with the knowledge to make good choices,” Hardison said, “and then it’s up to them.”

Encouraging results

Choice of beverages is an area in which Hardison believes the program can have an immediate and important effect. Students do a taste testing of low-cal beverages, soft drinks and powdered drinks.

“It’s like a wine tasting, where the kids sip and rate,” he said. They’re then encouraged to switch to a healthier choice that suits their palates.

Hardison said that some 80 percent have found a healthier alternative than sugar-laden soft drinks.

Hardison and Lazorick have published several papers on their results, which show consistently that seven out of 10 students have improved BMI scores.

And the results stick, Hardison said. Their research shows kids retain the learning well into late adolescence.

“You’ve got a small window where these kids are easily motivated, and we’ve got to grab that window and try to instill those healthy behaviors when we’ve got the chance” Hardison said.

The program has gone from schools in Eastern North Carolina to Cherokee County, South Carolina. Now Hardison needs to find 70 more schools over the coming two years to scale up.

Lazorick would like to see it disseminated further still – a cost-effective program that’s successful in reducing obesity, taught within the schools, with resources that are already there.

“The potential,” she said, “is phenomenal.”

Additional reporting provided by Rose Hoban.

Additional Thanks

Categories

Mecklenburg County health program wins national competition

Mecklenburg County health program wins national competition - North Carolina Health News

By Yen Duong

Village HeartBEAT: a national example

Using the faith community to reach people

Winning the national competition

“It’s time for North Carolina to do it.”

When Wood Smoke Poses Risks

When Wood Smoke Poses Risks - North Carolina Health News

By Catherine Clabby

Downsides to smoke

Outdoors too

New Awareness Day Aims to Help North Carolinians Learn about High Blood Pressure

New Awareness Day Aims to Help North Carolinians Learn about High Blood Pressure - North Carolina Health News

By Leah Asmelash

Competition for Heart Patients Gears Up in Raleigh

Competition for Heart Patients Gears Up in Raleigh - North Carolina Health News

By Thomas Goldsmith and Rose Hoban

Competition for hearts heats up

Report Points to Disparity in Rural/Urban Life Expectancy

Report Points to Disparity in Rural/Urban Life Expectancy - North Carolina Health News

By Taylor Sisk

Poverty bound

‘Older, poorer, sicker’

Targeted funding

Kids Find Their Own Way to Healthy Living

Kids Find Their Own Way to Healthy Living - North Carolina Health News

By Taylor Sisk

Not overburdening

‘Up to them’

Encouraging results