Keeping Healthy: Lunch and Learn

"We're trying to keep everyone healthy, health and wellness, I mean we are a hospital, and we want to treat them but we want to understand how to treat themselves."

And that's how Little Falls Hospital's "Lunch and Learn" program was born, in an effort to educate the community, and respond to requests from residents for health education. Kate Reese of Little Falls Hospital says it offers this lunch seminar every month.  They provide a free meal, and a variety of topics are presented by experts in the field.

"Know your numbers, which is knowing your blood pressure numbers," Reese lists the topics they've covered, "what your cholesterol numbers are, your BMI...they want to know about nutritional labels,  how to read the labels, they want to know something about diabetes, obesity, smoking cessation."

Reese says it's been well received by the public--and they get participants from all over.  It's offered on a first come, first served basis, and it often fills up. For this lunch and learn, the participants learn about healthy hearts, which is a subject that drew Dolgeville resident Irene Tooly to the seminar.

"Ihave high cholesterol and triglyceride," Tooly says, "and the more I learn about it, the better it'll be for me to try and keep it down."

Tooly says the community is fortunate to have a free service like this.

"I think it's wonderful, wonderful; I've never been to one of these where I haven't learned an awful lot."