Community: A Powerful Force for Health Promotion

As a health educator at Heartland Health Centers on the north side of Chicago, my work has focused mainly on nutrition education. Most of the time, providers at the clinics I serve refer patients to me who have diabetes, obesity, or high cholesterol and we chat one-on-one about their diet and exercise habits in order to generate realistic goals for improvement. We may make a list of healthy meal options or healthy groceries to buy, plan a doable exercise regimen, or come up with some healthier variations of favorite foods. In an ideal world, they will follow up with me in about a month, hopefully having made progress toward a healthier lifestyle.
However, on Wednesday evenings this fall, I was involved with a different type of nutrition education: a series of group classes.  Led by me, a registered dietitian, and a team of medical professionals, the class drew a regular group whom we got to know well over the course of two months. The group members ranged widely in age, race, and ethnicity; they lived in different neighborhoods and with a variety of health conditions. While the group setting lacked some of the individualization possible in one-on-one sessions, it promoted community, consistency, and idea sharing. Every week before delving into a new lesson, we asked the group to share some healthy choices they made since the last class. Hearing tangible examples of what other group members were doing provided motivation to the rest of the class, reinforced the lessons we were teaching week to week, and reminded the group they were not alone in their efforts to live more healthfully.
The group lessons focused on holistic nutrition principles. The classes underscored that while patients face a variety of health concerns, a good diet based in minimally processed foods and high in vegetables will provide effective therapy for a host of conditions. By the end of the class, a woman who was obese had lost 15 pounds; a woman with hypertension dropped her blood pressure significantly; and a diabetic woman was able to keep her blood sugar under better control. Patients were able to achieve positive results with diets based in their diverse ethnic cuisines as well, highlighting the wide variety of forms a healthy, effective diet can take.
I was sad to see this class end before the holidays, but I plan to incorporate the lessons I learned into my service in the new year.

This post was written by NHC Chicago member, Claire Brady.

Claire Brady serves as a Health Educator at  Heartland Health Centers.