Next HEAT meeting is Sept. 1

We have postponed the planned August 25 HEAT meeting to avoid a conflict with the Town Hall Meeting on Health Care Reform. The next HEAT meeting is now scheduled for Tuesday, September 1, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, Conference Room A (enter through cafeteria). We will get on update on recent activities and discuss plans to develop a Food Policy Council to address childhood obesity and the food environment. Dinner will be available from TMH catering for $5. Please contact Lance Gravlee to reserve a dinner or to suggest agenda items.

Town Hall Meeting on Health Care Reform

On August 25 at 6:00 p.m., there will be a town hall meeting on health care reform in the Tallahassee City Commission Chamber. The panel will include Congressman Allen Boyd, Dr. Raymond Bellamy, and Dr. Joseph Webster. Mary Ann Lindley from the Tallahassee Democrat will moderate the discussion. We have postponed our August HEAT meeting, which was originally scheduled for the same time, to avoid a conflict with this important event.

The public is invited — and many are sure to turn out — so plan to get there early to add your voice to the discussion.

Action Strategies Toolkit from RWJF

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has published an invaluable resource to help state and local policymakers make their communities healthier. The Action Strategies Toolkit from RWJF’s Leadership for Healthy Communities initiative describes a range of evidence-based strategies to promote health and curb childhood obesity. The strategies involve policy changes in several areas related to active living and the food environment, including land-use policies to encourage physical activity and incentives to attract supermarkets and farmers’ markets to neighborhoods with limited access to healthy food choices.

Download the full toolkit (PDF) or executive summary (PDF) from the RWJF website.

Podcast: Social Environment Shapes Health

In a recent podcast from Partnership for Prevention, Dr. David Williams, Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, discusses the work of the Commission to Build a Healthier America. Williams discusses what makes Americans healthy and what we can do to improve public health in the United States. He identifies two take home messages from the Commission that are relevant to our work with HEAT. First, all Americans could be healthier than they are. This is important because it reminds us that health equity matters for everyone, not just people in disadvantaged groups. Second, as Williams puts it, “Good health is not created in doctors’ offices and hospitals.” Williams describes our health care system as a repair shop; we need to focus on what causes people to get sick in the first place. It follows that we need to broaden the current debate about health care reform to include a focus on how the social environment shapes health and drives up health care costs.

Tune in to Prevention Matters for the full podcast.