Annual health policy forum set Sept. 28 in Bowling Green

This year's annual Howard L. Bost Health Policy Forum "will offer new insights and opportunities from a range of civic sectors for a shared vision, policies, and actions for community health," says its lead sponsor, the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

"Local, regional, and national speakers will share their knowledge and experiences in building healthy communities, with a focus on transportation and housing, education, food systems and policy, and employers and workplaces," the foundation says. "TED style" speakers will make presentations on each of the forum's four focus areas: education, food systems and policy, employer/workplace, and transportation/housing.

The forum will be held at the Sloan Convention Center in Bowling Green on Monday, Sept. 28. For the registration website, click here.

Kentucky is one of three states to get Walmart Foundation money to expand farm-to-school programs

Kentucky will use money from The Walmart Foundation to partner with the National Farm to School Network to expand efforts to get more local foods into schools.

A project called Seed Change will “jump start” programs that get local foods into schools and enhance food education for more than 1.8 million school children at 100 sites in Kentucky, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, the network said in a news release. Each site will get $5,000 grants, with applications to be accepted later this spring.

The state Department of Agriculture’s farm-to-school program connects schools with local farmers and food producers and helps students "learn to appreciate the importance of local foods and grow into well-informed consumers who demand local foods as adults," the release said. The program served an estimated 364,000 children in about 700 schools in 84 districts in the 2011-12 school year. For more information on the program, go to www.kyagr.com or contact Tina Garland at 502-382-7505 or tina.garland@ky.gov.

Grant will fund Lexington signs, maps to encourage walking

A $182,000 grant will fund a pilot project in Lexington to encourage citizens to walk more, by erecting way-finding signs for pedestrians and updating walking maps.

The new Walk Lexington program will also feature signs that tell people how easy it is to get from one spot to another such as "It's only two minutes to the library." The signs are used to help people realize that walking is often faster than driving.

The grant is from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which awards grants to programs in cities where the Knight brothers once owned newspapers, including the Lexington Herald-Leader.

A Herald-Leader report on the grant indicted that the recipient is the NoLi Community Development Corp., a nonprofit trying to make the North Limestone corridor a more livable place, through the Blue Grass Community Foundation, which announced it.

Students in poor Louisville neighborhoods learn healthful behaviors in Farm to Family Initiative

A program to fight childhood obesity and foster healthy habits in Louisville’s under-served youth has seen positive results since its launch in October 2013, says KentuckyOne Health. Results include:

• 41 percent of students now eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily, up from 23 percent.
• 91 percent of students engage in at least 60 minutes of daily physical activity, up from 63 percent.
• 90 percent of students have eaten a vegetable they harvested or picked themselves, up from 59 percent.
• 93 percent of students know how to prepare a healthy recipe, up from 63 percent.

The Farm to Family Initiative is a collaboration between the Food Literacy Project and Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital, part of KentuckyOne. It aims to influence long-term health and food literacy for students at Hazelwood and Wellington elementary schools, where more than 90 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

The project is funded by a $200,000 grant from the Johnson & Johnson Community Health Care Program Award for the Prevention of Childhood Obesity.

Johnson foundation, Appalachian commission, Foundation for a Healthy Ky. to examine bright and dark spots in Appalachia

The Appalachian Regional Commission, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky are working on a three-year health-research project to determine factors that can support a culture of health in Appalachia and whether that knowledge can be translated into actions that address the region's health disparities.

“Creating a Culture of Health in Appalachia: Disparities and Bright Spots,” will run through the end of 2017. The project will identify “bright spots” where health outcomes are better than indicated by unemployment, poverty rates and other community factors. Experts will try to figure out why, and will likewise examine why health outcomes in some communities are not as good as would be expected. 

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is providing $750,000 for the project, and ARC will contribute $250,000. The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky will administer the project.

“This groundbreaking effort will provide a deeper understanding of factors that contribute to or undermine community health,” said Susan Zepeda, president and CEO of the foundation.

The project will produce a database with county-level health and economic data; hold discussions with local leaders to help explain the findings; develop policy-based user tools, including a Web site featuring data sets and a GIS-based tool to help visualize research outcomes and community profiles; and examine policy implications and make recommendations.

Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky lists 2014 grants

The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky has provided more than $1.3 million in 2014 for community programs, polling and policy initiatives to not only advise policymakers but also advocate for better health and health care across the state.

"Our strategies to address the unmet health care needs of Kentuckians are built on investment at the local and state levels," Susan Zepeda, president and CEO of the foundation, said in a news release.

The foundation said it donated $125,000 to Kentucky Voices for Health, a coalition of lobbying groups that support health reform; $50,000 to Kentucky Youth Advocates, an organization dedicated to the improvement of public policies that influence the lives of children and families and $60,000 to the University of Cincinnati for the 2013 Kentucky Health Issues Poll.

As part of a 2012-17 strategic plan to help school-aged children grow up to be healthier than their parents, the foundation provided three grantees money to set in motion the business plans they developed. Recipients included: Clinton County School District ($158,361), Fitness for Life Around Grant County ($182,033) and Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness ($161,850). The foundation also funds a multi-year study of Kentucky's transition to managed-vcare Medicaid.

The foundation matched a $3 million federal investment to begin nurse-managed clinics, telemedicine, mobile health services, care navigation and and an activities center. These projects "have improved the quality of life for more than 20,000 Kentuckians and provided training for more than 250 providers," according to the release.

To support the improvement of health literacy in Kentucky, the foundation invested $100,000 in health programming on KET, and $25,000 with the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky , mainly for the publication of Kentucky Health News.

U of L plans to create statewide health institute with $4 million, three-year grant from KentuckyOne Health hospital firm

The University of Louisville is creating an institute to improve Kentucky's health through research, education and advocacy of health policies.

KentuckyOne Health is giving the university $4 million over three years to establish the Commonwealth Institute of Kentucky in U of L's School of Public Health and Information Sciences. Dean Craig Blakely said the institute will work in western Louisville but also on statewide issues, focusing on data gathering and analysis.

"Kentucky has the nation's highest rates of cancer deaths and smoking, and ranks among the top for cardiovascular disease, obesity, prescription drug abuse and other health problems," Laura Ungar notes for The Courier-Journal. "And certain neighborhoods, regions and populations suffer disproportionately, with even higher rates."

Kentucky gets a $7 million grant to improve survival rates for lung cancer, in which it leads the nation

The University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and the Lung Cancer Alliance have joined in a unique project called Kentucky LEADS (Lung Cancer, Education, Awareness, Detection, Survivorship) Collaborative to assess new approaches for identifying lung cancer earlier to improve survival rates.

These efforts are supported through a $7 million grant from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation’s Bridging Cancer Care initiative.

Kentucky has more cases of lung cancer than any other state and its lung cancer mortality rate is nearly 50 percent higher than the national average. This year alone, 3,500 Kentuckians will die from lung cancer, a UK news release reports.

“As Kentucky leads the nation in lung cancer mortality rates, we must step up to be a leader in finding solutions toward preventing, curing and coping with this destructive disease,” Gov. Steve Beshear said. “I strongly support this collaborative, wide-ranging effort as it coincides with this administration’s KyHealthNow goals of reducing statewide cancer and smoking rates by 10 percent by 2019. By working together, we can and will find a way to diminish the burden of this crisis in Kentucky."

The project will also develop and evaluate interventions to improve quality of life and survivorship for individuals with lung cancer and their caregivers, the release says.

"Historically there's not been a lot of research or effort put into lung-cancer survivorship because, unfortunately, there hasn't been much survivorship," said Jamie Studts, associate professor of behavioral science at UK and director of the Kentucky LEADS Collaborative.

One in two patients diagnosed with lung cancer will die within a year. After five years, only 16 in 100 patients will be alive, UKNow writes.

"Those are sobering statistics,” said John Damonti, president of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation. “The timing of diagnosis is critical. Patients diagnosed at Stage 1 have a 57 percent chance of achieving five-year survival. That drops to 4 percent when patients have a late-stage diagnosis. Early detection and treatment of lung cancer, combined with education and patient support, is key to increased survival for patients living with lung cancer.”

The project will include several components: a review of how physicians treat and refer lung cancer patients across the state; the creation of a sustainable lung cancer-specific survivorship program; and a program that will promote evidence-based prevention and early detection of lung cancer in Kentucky.

Early detection has recently become more attainable because lung cancer screening guidelines have recently changed, allowing Kentucky to implement rigorous, statewide screening programs that can save lives, UKNow writes. And because symptoms of lung cancer usually show up after the disease has spread, early screening is critical to reduce deaths.

W. Ky. elementaries use Baptist Health grants to join national program to fight childhood obesity; results encouraging

Two more West Kentucky schools have joined Project Fit America, a fitness program that targets childhood obesity, to help its students become more fit, reports The Paducah Sun.

East Calloway County and Calvert City elementary schools are the seventh and eighth schools in the area to win a $16,500 grant from Baptist Health Paducah for indoor and outdoor fitness equipment, teacher training and curriculum material, all included with the Project Fit America program.

"We believe as educators it is our responsibility to help our young population begin healthy lifestyles that will follow them into adulthood," Kathy Crouch, East Calloway principal, told the Sun.

Kentucky ranks eighth in child obesity, and U.S. adult obesity is expected to grow from 30 percent of the population now to 60 percent by 2030.

Benton Elementary, which joined the program only last year, has already documented improvement in students' fitness, showing a a 27 percent increase in cardiovascular endurance, 18 percent increase in upper body strength, 12 percent increase in abdominal strength and a 38 percent increase in students who could perform pull-ups.

Project Fit America is a national non-profit group that has worked with nearly 900 schools in 45 states to motivate students, parents and faculty to choose fitness over sedentary lifestyle habits. (Read More. This article is behind a pay wall.)

Saint Joseph Hospital Foundation and Verizon team up to help certain patients with chronic diseases monitor their health

Verizon and the Saint Joseph Hospital Foundation have teamed up to help select patients who have a chronic disease manage their condition from home, according to a press release from KentuckyOne Health, St. Joseph's parent organization.

The program will help patients age 50 and older monitor and manage their health with new technologies after being discharged from Saint Joseph Hospital and Saint Joseph East in Lexington, and Saint Joseph Mount Sterling.  It will also be available to some patients who have certain health issues by referral from their primary care provider or patients can enroll in the program if they have been treated for congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), coronary artery bypass graft surgery, diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia as well as some other concerns.

The goal is to enroll 300 patients in the first year of the program, according to the release.

Funding to create this program came from a $125,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation and in-kind donations of technologies, which includes 4G LTE powered smartphones and tablets, from Verizon Wireless. Grant funds will purchase biometric devices to better self-manage the participants conditions and share that information with their team of health care providers. 

Patients will use the smartphones and tablets for six months to access pre-loaded health apps, such as Glucose Buddy and Fooducate, according to the release. The grant will also provide items such as digital weight scales, blood pressure monitors, FitBit activity trackers, CalorieKing Calorie, Fat and Carbohydrate Counter book and digital food scales/nutritional calculators.  Some will get glucose test strips. Individualized health-coaching will also be available.

"Verizon is also supplying all of the technology protective gear for the devices, the data plans to allow that technology to work, plus funding for a part-time dietitian and research assistant for the program," the release says.