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Healthier habits: San Mateo County hopes to focus on increasing local programs, education and awareness of obesity and other health problems.
San Mateo County (Map, News) - More than half of San Mateo County’s residents are overweight, and health leaders say they are not taking it lying down.
Now they’re hoping residents won’t, either.
The Sequoia Healthcare District, which operates hospitals and medical programs in the Peninsula, released a 56-page report this week analyzing what medical services are not being provided adequately, and how to remedy the situation.
The report also shows that 57 percent of San Mateo County residents are overweight, less than 10 percent live healthy lifestyles that could prevent premature deaths and 54 percent do not participate in regular exercise.
The district plans on shifting its resources away from treating people who are sick and focusing more on preventing people from becoming unhealthy in the first place, said interim Executive Director Dev Mahadevan.
“If you’re drinking three cans of pop a day … and if your major source of exercise is pressing the remote, it’s not good for you,” Mahadevan said. “Clearly we need to spend more money on those sorts of things.”
Local programs, education and awareness will be increased to cut down on obesity, diabetes and other health problems running rampant throughout the county.
In addition to grants, the district has anywhere from $7 million to $10 million in taxpayer and other dollars to dole out to about 15 programs each year, Mahadevan said. The district also offers programs for living healthy during a disaster, and keeping youth and adults engaged and active.
Supervisor Rich Gordon, who was interviewed during Sequoia’s independent report by Los Angeles-based The Camden Group, said he would like to see existing services, such as the Children’s Health Initiative for uninsured kids, continue to thrive.
The district is generally more helpful in providing the county with money than vice versa, so it would be difficult to increase funding for Sequoia’s programs, Gordon said.
Northern Peninsula is also beefing up its plans to slim down residents.
Cheryl Fama, CEO of the Peninsula Healthcare District in Burlingame, said her group is in the process of determining health trends in the northern part of the county before it applies for a new batch of grants. They also purchased 5,000 pedometers to pass out to residents looking to get healthy “one step at a time,” Fama said.
By the numbers
San Mateo County health statistics
57% Population that is overweight
54% Population that doesn’t participate in regular exercise
67,000 Non-elderly population without health care
24% Population without employer-provided health care available
Source: The Camden Group
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Examiner Reader said:
i can relate this article in our hospital her in the philippines. especially in the main e.r. patient came in and out inh the e.r and i observe some of the staff are not attending the patients; and the e.r doctors are not in the duty or they are not in the e.r room. also i noticed that our e.r is lack of instrumnet being used to the patient. may the problem is in our goverment not in the hospital... thanks for the insight author.
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Examiner Reader said:
""Several members of the board, left, right and center, think this has been poorly thought out,” Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin told The Examiner. “Fisherman’s Wharf is the goose that lays the golden egg for San Francisco. We don’t want to commit economic suicide.”" What an absolute crock... completely political on the part of this Supervisor and any other of them. Neighborhood groups continually contact their District Superviors about impact of street fairs and large events in and close to residential areas for years and we are told we are just "killing" the spirit of fun in The City. Well now is a chance to have fun when it doesn't impact neighborhoods. Just the same old political BS from Supervisors who continually enjoy conflict.
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Examiner Reader said:
Sometimes Mayor Newsom can be so clueless. Real life can be considerably different outside "Newsom-land" in the Mayor's head.
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Examiner Reader said:
In March, Izzy's got a 42 and spent quite a bit of money to follow code and improve. 3 months later they recieve negative press while pending inspection. Latest score--94. How about positive press instead of slamming local hard working firms.
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Examiner Reader said:
My 9-year-old son had open heart surgery and was on the heart/lung machine during his surgery,after which he experienced anxiety and depression and had thoughts of suicide. He took his own life at 17 years old. I wish I had known this risk of the heart surgery and specifically the risk of being on the heart/lung machine.
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Examiner Reader Hater said:
Did you even read the article?
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Examiner Reader said:
I think its incredibly important to know exactly what goes into our food so we can make an educated guess in deciding what goes into our bodies is the best thing for us in order to take better care of ourselves. Had we been informed of the risk of adding sugary and fattening fried food into our diet, we would have never allow these filthy thing to touch our lips. Fried and sugary food should have been expensive, and NOT healthy, nutritious food for our consumption. Also once these bad, nutritionally poor food is consumed, it is unusually addictive and bad habits can be hard to break.
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