Award winning medical journalist, Dr. Walt Larimore (better known as Dr. Walt) will be the featured speaker at Bryan/LGH Plaza on Wednesday, June 8^th at 7:00 pm. Teach a Kid to Fish, together with Partnership for a Healthy Lincoln and the Lancaster County Medical Society are bringing Dr. Walt to Lincoln to help explore the epidemic of childhood obesity and what we, as a community, can do about it.

 

Dr. Larimore is one of America’s best-known family physicians and is listed in the Best Doctors in America, Who’s Who in Medicine and Healthcare, and the International Health Professionals of the Year. His MD degree is from Louisiana State University, with AOA Honors, while his Family Medicine residency, with an emphasis in Sports Medicine was at the Duke University Medical Center, where he was named one of the top twelve Family Medicine residents in the nation. He also completed a Queen’s Teaching Fellowship in Nottingham, England.

 

After his training, Dr. Larimore practiced 4 years in the Smoky Mountains before moving to Central Florida to practice for 16 years. From 1993-1994 he served as the President of the Florida Academy of Family Physicians. In 1996, he was named America’s Outstanding Family Medicine Educator by the American Academy of Family Physicians. In 2000, Dr. and Mrs. Larimore were named Educators of the Year by the Christian Medical Association. 

The Larimores relocated to Colorado Springs in 2001. Besides practicing family medicine, Dr. Larimore is also an author, educator, and medical journalist. He serves on the adjunct family medicine faculty of the In His Image Family Medicine Residency in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. 

 

Dr. Larimore is a frequent guest about family health topics on a wide variety of television and radio programs and has appeared on The Today Show, CBS’s Morning Show, several Fox News programs, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. Dr. Larimore has written or edited over twenty books and over 600 articles in a variety of medical journals and lay magazines. His best-selling books include Bryson City Tales, Bryson City Seasons, and Alternative Medicine: The Christian Handbook. 

 

For more about Dr. Walt, visit http://www.drwalt.com/

 

Dr. Walt will speak at Bryan/LGH Plaza (1600 South 48th Street in Lincoln) on Wednesday, June 8^th at 7:00 pm. Admission is free but reservations are encouraged as seating is limited.

To RSVP or for more information write info@teachakidtofish.org.

Movers and Shakers (reprinted from PreventObesity.net) 

 

Dr. Karla Lester had been practicing medicine for seven years when she realized she needed to make a change. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her work; in fact, the Lincoln, Neb. pediatrician was more motivated than ever to improve the health of her young patients. It was that she didn’t think the occasional visit with them was enough.

 

So many were coming to her showing the negative effects of childhood obesity, and the typical check-up just wasn’t going to help them. Her patients needed continued, regular treatment to get healthy, but Lester had few resources she could provide beyond telling them to eat better and lose weight.

 

That’s when Lester decided to act. She left her practice and formed "Teach a Kid to Fish," a public health collaborative initiative that works to bring various stakeholders together — doctors, patients, schools, government officials and community leaders — to find ways to provide support and tackle the childhood obesity epidemic in Lincoln.

 

Lester jokes that the idea behind the initiative isn’t to actually teach any kids to fish — something Lester actually gets asked about a lot, she tells The Inside Track — but rather work to give kids the resources needed to help them live a long and healthy life. It’s something doctors don’t always know how to do, Lester says.

 

"There’s a lot of barriers in a primary care setting, and one of those is that your patients have a lot of barriers," Lester explains. "You don’t have a lot of time to address this issue… we weren’t educated in residency. This is a new thing. Obesity is a chronic disease."

A nonprofit group, Teach a Kid to Fish looks for ways to close gaps in the community that prevent kids from getting the resources needed to combat obesity, both to prevent them from putting on excess weight, and help them lose it if they’ve already done so. The nonprofit oversees several working groups that target specific areas, including health care providers, school systems, government policies, businesses and faith-based and community organizations. These working groups then develop strategic plans and action steps designed to improve the local community.

 

Since founding the group in 2008, Lester has worked on a number of initiatives, including helping the Nebraska Medical Association come up with healthy weight toolkits for young people and lobbying for state legislation supporting breastfeeding. She’s currently working to develop an integrated model between health care providers and schools to figure out the most effective ways the two can help kids, a project that is being funded by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

 

Teach a Kid to Fish also promotes the 54321 Go! program, which encourages young people to eat five servings of produce, drink four glasses of water, eat three servings of low fat dairy, take part in 2 hours or less of screen time and exercise for one hour each day. The nonprofit recently started a youth working group that will serve as 54321 Go! ambassadors throughout the community, taking its message to schools, health fairs, worksites and child-care centers, Lester says.

 

It’s all part of the overall mission of Teach a Kid to Fish: to be a grassroots organization whose roots lay in the community. It’s not just about Lester lecturing folks; it’s about the community really coming together to make it easier for kids to lead healthy lives.

 

Lester says sometimes she’ll talk to local groups about childhood obesity, and they’ll ask her if she’s familiar with Teach a Kid to Fish. "That to me is the biggest compliment," Lester says.

 

Partnership for a Health Lincoln (PHL), a 501c(3) organization, was established on July 1st, 2010 through grants and in kind funding provided by the Community Health Endowment of Lincoln, Health Partners Initiative, Catholic Health Initiatives, and the Lancaster County Medical Society. PHL, directed by Robert R. Rauner, MD, MPH, is charged with improving the health and well being of Lincoln’s citizens through implementation of the recommendations of the Mayor’s Healthcare Safety Net Task Force, encouraging lasting improvements in healthy lifestyles through community initiatives, and supporting evidenced based changes in community and state health policy. PHL will work with and support community organizations to achieve these goals. PHL will also provide regular communication with stakeholders on the progress toward achievement of these goals.

 

Mission: Partnership for a Healthy Lincoln exists to coordinate and assist Lincoln organizations in improving the health and well-being of all Lincoln citizens.

Vision: By 2015, Lincoln will achieve significant and quantifiable improvements in the health and well-being of its citizens. Not only will this make Lincoln a more attractive and enjoyable city to live in, it will also result in significant decreases in health care costs and make Lincoln a more attractive city for employers.

 

Values:

1. Equity: Improvements in the health and well-being of all, regardless of age, gender, race, or socioeconomic status.

2. Efficiency: Accountable and cost-effective use of resources.

3. Collaboration: Working with existing community organizations to cooperate and share resources.

4. Evidence Based: Initiatives and objectives that are based on sound evidence and driven by local data.

In 2011, the Nebraska Medical Association’s Childhood Obesity Prevention Project, in collaboration with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, Creighton University School of Medicine, and Teach a Kid to Fish, is hosting the “Foster Healthy Weight in Youth Webinar Series.”  Specifically, the series consists of six webinars throughout 2011, focusing on the comorbidities of childhood obesity. All webinars are held live from noon – 1:00 p.m. CST and offer 1 hour of FREE CME for physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, and dieticians. The webinars are then offered as an encore for two years on the NMA’s COPP website at www.nebmed.org/copp.aspx.

The third webinar in the series will be held on May 3, 2011 from noon-1:00 p.m. CST. Dr. Paul Esposito, Orthopedic Surgeon at Children’s Hospital and Medical Center in Omaha will present “Pay Now AND Pay Later: The Impact of Childhood Obesity on Bones, Joints, and Muscles.”

The encores of the previous webinars in the series are now available online at www.nebmed.org/copp.aspx.  All encore webinars still offer 1 hour for FREE CME for the providers listed above. Previous webinars include:
• “Associated Comorbidities of Childhood Obesity” by Dr. Sandra Hassink – January 2011
• “Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Children” by Dr. Ruben Quiros – March 2011

Additional speakers and topics will be posted on the NMA’s COPP website. Tentative dates for the remaining webinars are as follows:
July 13, 2011
September 21, 2011
November 16, 2011

Watch the NMA’s STAT e-news or the check the website for updates. To find out more information about the project, please visit www.nebmed.org/copp.aspx. If you would like to be added to the mailing list for COPP updates and details about the upcoming webinar series, please contact Tami Frank at tamif@nebmed.org or 402-474-4472.

 

May is a here and spring is in the air! It’s the perfect time of the year to enjoy Lincoln’s natural beauty, history, and culture from the unique perspective of a bicycle. Many Nebraskans and Lincolnites engage in bicycling for transportation, recreation, physical activity, environmental preservation, competition and fun.  

 

To encourage more bicycling, Teach a Kid to Fish is celebrating May as National Bike Month and May 16^th through the 20^th as Bike to Work Week.

 

Cycling is a great way to get that 1 hour or more of daily physical activity suggested in the 5-4-3-2-1-Go! message. 5-4-3-2-1-Go! is a simple message to help you remember what your child needs to do to be healthy and fit. Each number stands for an action step that your child can take to be healthy and prevent childhood obesity.

5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day

4 servings of water a day

3 servings of low-fat dairy a day

2 hours or less of screen time (TV, computer, etc.) a day

1 hour or more of physical activity a day

 

Following are some tips from the League of American Bicyclists, the national organization of bicyclists, that will help you enjoy biking to work more.

-          Have your bike checked over by your local bike shop

-          Always wear a helmet to protect your head in the event of a crash

-          Ride to the far right side of the roadway or street

-          Obey all traffic laws (stop signs, traffic lights, and yield signs)

-          Look before you change lanes or make a turn; indicate your intention, then act

-          Be visible and predictable at all times; wear bright clothing and signal turns

 

For more information visit www.bikeleague.org