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Scott Webb (Host): The Health Promotion Department at Salinas Valley Health offers many services and programs like the Produce Prescription Program and department manager, Amanda Meyer joins me today to tell us all about what she and the program have to offer.

Host: This is Ask the Experts, the podcast from Salinas Valley Health. I'm Scott Webb. Amanda, thanks so much for your time today. Before we get rolling too far along here, I want to have you tell us about the health and wellness programs at Salinas Valley Health, especially the Health and Promotion Department, the different things that you offer to the community. Tell folks about them.

Amanda Meyer: Our Salinas Valley Health Promotion Department really looks to enhance the health and wellbeing of our community through a variety of programs, classes, support groups. We partner with other departments within the healthcare system, organizations and other healthcare providers to bring a variety of health and wellness programs to the community. Some of those that I would love to highlight and share with your listeners are mindfulness classes. Mindfulness is such an important practice to really help us center ourselves and reduce stress. And really is a tool even in helping to manage chronic disease and prevention. So, we offer mindfulness classes almost every day of the week. We have a mindfulness meditation class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And then on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, we have a different type of mindfulness meditation classes. One that includes balance work, yoga moves whilst seated in a chair. So, it's really helping with your mobility, your flexibility, and then working your mind with that mindfulness component. These classes are very cool, and we're very happy to offer them to the community and they 're free. Almost all of our classes are free of charge. And these mindfulness classes are virtual, so you can join from anywhere. And we can even bring these to your organization. So if you're an organization that's interested in having a class presented to your employees, we can even do that as well.

Host: Yeah, that's awesome, especially just being able to join from anywhere from our phones, computers, wherever it might be. I want to have you tell folks about Walk With A Doc. What does that mean? I hope that's exactly what I picture it being.

Amanda Meyer: Yeah, it's exactly what you think it is. In fact, some people when they first hear us say Walk With a Doc, they think we're saying dog. And I tell them, "No, but please do bring your dog because it is a pet-friendly event, it's a family-friendly event. So, Walk With A Doc is a national organization. And back in 2017, we were able to become an official local chapter. And in fact, we're the only local chapter of the Walk With a Doc organization. So, this is a monthly event. It's held once a month on a Saturday, and we meet at Fort Ort Badger Hills, which for those that are local and listening, it's on Highway 68 across from Toro Cafe. And we listen to a healthcare provider, a doctor, present on a very important health topic, a topic that we've selected for that month. So for example, February, it's always a focus on heart health. And then, we go on about a 30 to 40-minute walk. It's a really fun event. We average anywhere from about 30 to 40 people in attendance. I think one of our biggest turnouts was close to 80 people that came out to walk with us. And we were able to highlight our physicians, really connect our physicians with those in the community, and provide access to information that maybe they would not be able to hear otherwise.

And then, under the Walk With a Doc umbrella, there's also a program called Just Walk. And what's really cool about Just Walk is that it allows us to connect with other types of healthcare providers, so nurse practitioners, PAs, registered dieticians, certified diabetes educators, nurses, sleep technicians, and many more types of healthcare providers to bring as many people, you know, in front of the community as possible.

Host: That's so cool. I'm glad to know that it's pet-friendly. Bring your dog, go for a walk doc. Yeah, I was hoping it wasn't some sort of metaphorical thing, that it was literal. Like, we get to go for a walk with a doc, bring our doggies. That's awesome. And, you know, Amanda, I'm familiar with prescription programs, but not a produce prescription program. What does that mean? How does that work?

Amanda Meyer: Yeah. So, the Fresh Produce Prescription Program, it was piloted back in 2014 with a cohort of just five people. And these were five patients that had had a recent cardiac event and we were looking to help improve their overall health and wellbeing and help to manage their chronic condition, chronic disease through the increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, through health screenings, through providing recipes and wellness information. And those five people, we saw success in them, we saw improvements. So, we thought, "Why don't we grow this program?" And over time, the pilot of five turned into a pilot of a cohort. It's no longer a pilot of 100 patients. So, Fresh Produce Prescription Program looks to help those patients within our healthcare clinics or medical clinics to improve, manage and prevent chronic disease through the increased consumption of fruits and vegetables and promoting a healthier lifestyle and healthier habits. So, we specifically work with patients that have pre-diabetes, diabetes, uncontrolled hypertension and those that have had a recent cardiac event, and we are able to accept at this time referrals from our Salinas Valley Health PrimeCare Clinic, our Salinas Valley Health Diabetes and Endocrine Center, Central Coast Cardiology, and our own Salinas Valley Health Cardiac Rehab/Cardiac Wellness Program. And the patients that enroll in the program, they're making that commitment to improve their overall health. So, they're making the commitment to attend the farmer's market that's held here at Salinas Valley Health on Fridays from May to November, they attend every week. We provide them with market tokens, so kind of like market cash to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. We provide them with a new recipe every week, health and wellness information every week. And then three times during the course of the program, so when they start at the middle and at the end, we do what's called a biometric screening. So, that screening is checking their blood pressure, their weight, their waist circumference, and then calculating their BMI. And that helps them to see how they're improving, how they're getting healthier as a result of being in the program and then that gives us some data to work with to see the impact that we are making on the community and on these patients.

Host: Yeah. And I'm sure any employees who are listening are going to want to know how do they get in on this? Do they have to be a patient?

Amanda Meyer: Well, no. So, we have opened this program up to our employees. The catch, if you will, for that is that we want our employees to have participated in their wellness at work screening. So, every January, February, we facilitate wellness at work screenings, which are biometric screenings for our employees, where they also get a finger stick to get their glucose reading, a lipid panel. And then from there, if any of them are identified as having hypertension or possibly pre-diabetic, and then they go on to have an appointment with their doctor where they find out that they do have this condition or chronic disease, then they can enroll into the program. So, we actually completed our first round of wellness screenings for our staff earlier this year. And through that, we received about close to 45 referrals. So, we're currently processing those and hopefully enrolling our employees in the program and helping them along their wellness journey.

Host: Yeah. That's awesome. We're sort of all in this together, so patients, employees. Where could folks get more information about the programs?

Amanda Meyer: The Fresh Produce Prescription Program right now is currently on a referral-only basis. So, we don't have information that's readily available on our website because we can only allow so many people in the program. This program could easily become hundreds and hundreds. So, we work specifically one-on-one with the community health workers and physicians within these health clinics. But in terms of our classes, all of that information can be found on our website, so salinasvalleyhealth.com. And then, they can visit our events and classes section.

But one thing I do want to point out that I don't think we've touched on yet, is our Pathways to Wellness. So, Pathways to Wellness is a quarterly brochure that is in print and digital. And it has all of our hospital classes, programs, support groups for that quarter. So, that is found by visiting again salinasvalleyhealth.com, and going over to the Pathways section and you can see the digital copy of that or people can join our mailing list and have it mailed to them. But Pathways shows everything that we offer. I know I mentioned mindfulness classes earlier, but we offer a yoga class once a week. We also enroll kiddos in asthma camp every summer. So, there really is a variety of offerings that can be found in our Pathways to Wellness brochure.

Host: Yeah. That's awesome. And this has been so fun today. So, thanks so much. You stay well.

Amanda Meyer: Thank you. You too.

Host: And for a full list of all of our podcasts, go to salinasvalleyhealth.com/podcasts. And if you found this podcast to be helpful, please be sure to tell a friend, neighbor or family member, and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and check out the entire podcast library for additional topics of interest. This is Ask the Experts from Salinas Valley Health. I'm Scott Webb. Stay well, and we'll talk again next time.