Health and wellness planning, maybe it's not happening

When you have to make fitness something that happens in a gym where you pay a monthly membership, you have a problem. So I am not so impressed, unlike the Washington Post, with the kids-only fitness gym created in Prince George's County, and featured in the article, "Sculpting a Gym Just for Kids," subtitled "Two Sisters Concerned About Youth Health Open Pr. George's Exercise Center for Children." Why not have recreation centers and fitness and gym facilities in schools be open beyond normal business hours?

Having neighborhood schools that children walk to, playgrounds, and neighborhoods where it's safe for children to amble, ride bikes, etc., not to mention do things other than watch tv or play videogames, have neighborhood and school-based athletic opportunities (not always necessarily based on competition), etc.

Yesterday's Post had an article somewhat related, about an area off Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE that is extremely distressed, without medical offices and few stores that sell fresh food. See "A D.C. Neighborhood Finds Itself in Unhealthy Condition." (Although, I will say it isn't too far to the Farmers Market in the RFK Stadium parking lot a couple times/week. How about vouchers to ride the bus for free back and forth to the market?)

This was my criticism starting last year about "planning" for a "National Capital Medical Center," which I called hospital planning, but not an example of health and wellness planning. (See this blog entry, "Health Planning vs. Hospital Planning redux.")

One of the problems under-identified in yesterday's article is the scale change of how medical services are provided. People interviewed lament that the neighborhood doesn't have medical offices, but frankly few neighborhoods do any more, and the provision of health care services aren't neighborhood-based but health-plan based. E.g., you can live nearby the Kaiser Permanente facilities, but if they aren't your provider, then it doesn't matter.

In any case, the trend of re "decentralizing" wellness services, such as through drug store based health clinics and the proposal to build more neighborhood-based (or at least ward based) health facilities to better address chronic health conditions prevalent in the inner city (such as diabetes) is one that should be supported by DC wellness and health care planning.

The issue in part is tying health care services to employment. Didn't see that mentioned in the Post article... Instead people stated that having a National Capital Medical Center might be a good thing.

Index Keywords: health-care-planning