Last week, President Bill Clinton had a conference with an expert panel on health and wellness to discuss the future health of our country. Today, I watched the video of it. I found this Health Matters Conference to be interesting because they kept it REAL! They weren’t sitting complaining about shit or yelling at Americans, they gave solutions to problems that we have and it was clear that we basically all need to work together. The panelists that Bill Clinton moderated were: Jillian Michaels, Billie Jean King, Dr. David Satcher, Richard Gephardt and Dr. Mark Hyman.
Here are some key points that I took away from the conference:
Our world has changed where we don’t just up and die at 65 years old. We’re living longer, but we are relying on doctors, medicine and healthcare to keep us alive and healthy. We need to change our culture, we need group support and community building. Building a community to create change as opposed to getting treatment from a doctor for obesity so that people will then take less medicine, prevent and/or reverse diseases and have less hospital visits. Billie Jean King said something great: “champions adjust”…..we need to adjust to the mess we have made with our health and wellness basically.
Care for yourself then learn how to take care of each other. Let’s use peer support models instead of conventional health care. Countries such as Thailand and Uganda use peer support models so they can be informed about their health, build a community to help each other and get healthier in the process. We needed to be informed about what we are eating, what the nutrition label says on the foods we eat and how it effects us. We need to have a REASON to eat healthier and have a healthier lifestyle. We need to form an emotional connection to being an overall healthy human being (examples: being able to run around with your grandkids, walking your kids down the aisle at their wedding, looking hot in a bathing suit, having more energy etc.) The solution across the panel of experts seemed to be “national culture change.”
They talked for a bit about children and the schools, but they did another conference later on that focused on children so the talk on that was limited. However, a statement was made by one of the panelists that children who eat healthy foods do better in school and are more focused.
President Bill Clinton made a great point, that I thought was very important. He mentioned to the panelists that there are some families that just don’t have alot of disposable income, and buying food that is high in calories in bulk is the only way they can survive and pay the bills. He then asked the panelists for some solutions.
The solutions: Let’s get serious about education, prevention and wellness. If we don’t do that then diabetes will financially eat us alive. Keep people healthy and PREVENT disease rather than TREATING the obesity issue. Families/Parents need to role model actions of a healthy lifestyle. Find the information about what is healthy, look at food labels, exercise daily and you will create a powerful change. Eat less, move more. Take the solution to be a healthier nation out of healthcare. Take the solution away from the doctors and look to change by building communities of people in schools, homes, workplace and churches.
My take home message from this was: Awareness, Community and Prevention = Change
Please feel free to comment or email me at desirebelieveachieve@gmail.com.
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