Building Better Health Amanda Heller Hi my name is Amanda Heller and I’m a branch manager with the San Diego County Library. My project is called Building Better Health.

Casa de Oro Branch Library 6,200 s.f. Community Room: 500 s.f. My library is located east of San Diego in the unincorporated area of Casa de Oro, California. With a population of over 18,000, we have a 62 hundred square foot storefront library. The community room is 500 s.f.

The Spark: Fit & Fun Building Better Health was a program to promote health and wellness for adults. The idea for it came from an awesome tween program I was doing at the library called Fit –N- Fun. The kids were having fun with healthy cooking classes and different exercises, and I wanted to kick it up a notch and expand the program to include adults.

Higher rate of obesity, diabetes and preventable disease than the national average While doing research for the program I found some shocking health statistics for my area. In San Diego county, we use a term called the 3-4-50. What is means is that 3 behaviors cause 4 diseases that account for 50% of deaths, all of which are preventable. In my community, that percentage jumps to 62%.

Reality Spring Valley has misconceptions about their health and their healthy behaviors According to recent studies, my community considered themselves to be very healthy, BUT on the flip side, are ranked the highest in terms of fast food restaurants at least once. A . day.

Building Better Health In line with SDCL and County’s Strategic Plans So, Building Better Health was born. It mixed together all the great things from Fit & Fun with valuable health information to improve their lifestyle choices and to shed light on local resources. It jived with our library’s mission to inform, educate and inspire and aligned with both the library’s and county’s strategic plans for health.

Fitness Classes Building Better Health had 4 major components. They were fitness classes, application assistance, health and wellness classes, and health screenings. First, my library hosted weekly yoga and zumba classes. About half way through the grant period a local instructor became interested in offering free power walking classes, so our fitness component expanded to include 3 types of exercise.

Application Assistance The second component involved Julia, who came to the library to offer assistance in filling out the Medi-Cal and Healthy Families applications in both English and Spanish on a weekly basis. Julia was always busy at the library and she says she still is taking calls from people who heard about it at the library.

Weight Management Series Nutrition/Exercise Workshops Exercise Demonstrations Healthy Cooking Classes A large part of my grant was focused on a weight management series that was 12 weeks in length. During this program, participants attended 3 nutrition and exercise workshops, 4 exercise demonstrations and 5 healthy cooking classes. In the photos above you can see some of the exercise demonstrations and also one of the nutrition workshops.

Health Screenings Glucose, heart health & weight screenings The 4th component was a variety of health screenings held in conjunction with the Weight Management Series. One participant, Dave, said the body scan was eye-opening in terms of his overall health. The facilitators gave him, and the others, a complete body workup.

Results Total participation in the weight management series was over 100 more than I expected. It was HUGE success. 67% of those participants lost weight. 24 families received assistance in filling out Medi-Cal and Healthy Families applications. Overall participation for the entire program was over 440. These results were pretty exciting, especially for my small branch.

? So what now? My hope was that libraries could at least take some parts of this program to their library. Because of my relationship with our partners, many of the programs were low in cost, if not free, such as the application assistance, nutrition and exercise workshops and yoga. I was pleased to find out that it reached further out in the community and a local college and a non-profit working in an elementary school were interested in duplicating the weight management series for their staff . Julia decided to offer her application assistance at other county libraries based on the success at our branch. I plan to take parts of the overall program and continue them at my branch as well as expand opportunities for local businesses to do business at the library.

Partners Healthy Adventures Foundation www.healthyadventuresfoundation.com La Maestra Community Health Center www.lamaestra.org Alessandra Eck, Zumba Fitness Meet Me at the Dinner Table www.meetmeatthedinnertable.com