Southern Indiana Living JanFeb 2014

Your health:
A community endeavor
Floyd County Memorial
Hospital’s three-pronged
approach to building a
healthier Southern Indiana
Story // Abby Laub
Photos // Floyd Memorial Hospital
Even if all you have is 10 minutes
a day to devote to exercise, it is
better than nothing, said Shannon
Carroll director of Floyd Memorial
Hospital’s Healthier Community
Initiative.
“If you tell the general population to
exercise for at least 30 minutes a day,
which is ideal, it’s so overwhelming they
won’t do anything,” she said. “But everyone
can do something for 10 minutes,
even if it’s in your pajamas. Science has
shown that at least 10 minutes really does
have a positive impact.”
The Healthier Community Initiative
is a collaboration between community
leaders and Floyd Memorial Hospital
that provides screenings, prevention and
Shannon Carroll and her sons
spent time last year at Cornucopia
Farms in Scottsburg.
education programs to more than 10,000
residents in seven Indiana counties.
The initiative in Floyd County is focused
on three specifc issues: physical
January/February 2014 • 38
activity, nutrition, and tobacco use; areas
identifed in a countywide health assessment
that showed the community struggling
with heart disease, cancer (lung,
colon and breast) and obesity.
Carroll, a nurse by training, is heading
up the coalitions — weight loss, healthier
eating and smoking cessation — that
began a little over a year ago to take on
these enormous health challenges.
Physical activity is key
Modern life is not conducive to exercise.
Remote controls, automatic doors,
smart phones and elevators take physical
activity out of nearly everything — not
to mention the increasingly frenetic pace
of every day life that makes exercising a
luxury rather than a staple of living.
The Physical Activity Coalition prong
of the Healthier Community Initiative is
working to change that. They hosted a
Family Fitness Day last September and
plan to do it again in 2014.
The frst ever Family Fitness Night
will be held at the hospital on January 9.
Headed up by Stretch-n-Grow Southern
Indiana’s Natalie Allen, the event is an
efort to get families on
“Everyone can
do something
for 10 minutes,
even if it’s in
your pajamas.”
-Shannon
Carroll,
on ftting
exercise into
daily routines
the same page for a night
of healthy fun. They will
leave with tools and plans
to keep up the good work
on a regular basis.
“We hope to teach families
the importance of
being active together and
give them an opportunity
to practice being active
together,” Carroll said.
The second part of the
campaign is the Give Me
10 initiative. There is a
separate website at www.
wellnesscsi.com, for the
initiative, contests and
activities throughout the
year to provide people
with tools and inspiration
for at least 10 minutes of daily physical
activity.
“The group wants to have ongoing educational
classes for all spectrums of the
population,” Carroll said.
Eat real food
Going hand in hand with exercise and
dealing with an overweight population is
a healthy diet.
The Nutrition Coalition has adopted
the fve fruits and vegetables a day campaign.
“Nutrition is so broad,” Carroll said.
“You can talk about 10 million things under
the umbrella of nutrition, but early
on we decide we wanted it to be our goal
as a coalition to increase the awareness,
education and consumption of fruits and
vegetables in Floyd County.”
Last spring, the coalition gave away
1,000 tomato plants and encouraged participants
to post updates on its Facebook
page on their plants’ progress. Carroll
said the initiative was very successful and
they plan to do it again and ultimately expand
it to more plants.
Among other plans, the coalition hopes
to get grocery stores to ofer more fruit
and vegetable samples to expose more
people to new healthy foods. According
to the countywide health assessment,
Carroll said, 30 percent of the population
is obese and 64.2 percent of the population
is overweight.
The biggest factor in these staggering
numbers? Carroll and her colleagues suspect
it is education and awareness. For
example, she said, among low income
Head Start preschool members, there are
larger numbers of overweight and obese
children but the parents are not in tune to
the problem.
“Some of them really, truly don’t know
their kids are overweight or unhealthy,”
Carroll said. “Education needs to happen.”
She said those sentiments are echoed
by physicians the coalition has talked
with as part of the research process.
“They are seeing a growing overweight
population,” she said, adding
that there is an increased efort to distribute
MyPlates (a tool to help eat balanced
nutrition meals) for each family who is a