Tag Archives: aha

National Walking Day!

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Every day on snapchat, I encourage people to walk. If you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ll know walking is one of my true passions in life and that David and I have been walking for at least 11 years now. 

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Well, Wednesday is your chance to get started on a walking program. It’s National Walking Day! 

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The American Heart Association has the following suggestions for how you can participate in National Walking Day. 

  • Take a walk on April 6!  (We encourage a 30-minute walk.) 
  • “Donate” your minutes walked that day at #AHALaceUp. Whether it’s 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour, post your minutes on social media using the hashtag #AHALaceUp and help us reach a total “donation” of 100,000 minutes walked across America! Follow our updates all day.
  • Want to encourage friends and family to join you? Planning a walk at work or school? It’s easy! Get the free National Walking Day toolkit with tips and promotional materials here!
  • And follow @american_heart on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for news and tips on fun ways to move.

I hope you’ll give it a whirl. It’s so easy and you’ll feel great afterwards. See you there! And don’t forget #AHALaceUP. 🙂

Teaching Kids to be Heroes

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Today, I was excited to be a part of a group from the American Heart Association that went to Blossom Valley Elementary School in Los Gatos to help teach the kids how to do hands only CPR.

It was quite an assembly. Also attending were several county councilpersons, the superintendent and many fired and EMS workers. Santa Clara County is working on putting automated external defibrillators (AEDs) n all of their schools. We were at Blossom Valley to talk to the kids about the AED and to show them how to use it.

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Three of the five fifth grade classes participated in the assembly. I love fifth graders! They are interested and smart and fun. They were excited to learn the process and they were all really good at it. I walked around, along with the other adults, to make sure they had their hands positioned correctly, were pumping the Manikins correctly, etc.  

The Manikins that were used are like the ones in the Family and Friends CPR Anytime kit.

The cool thing is that these kits can be purchased for your own home use so your fifth grader can learn how to properly do CPR, too! 

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Once the kids learned how to do the hands only CPR, the AED instructions were added in an they practiced that. I think they kids learned really well the subject matter they were supposed to learn. They had fun doing it and I’m sure that if they ever need to help someone, they will be able to!

 

Mrs. Southwest International 2016

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If you’ve been following along, you’ve seen that I’ve made a couple of appearances in the past month wearing a new banner. Yes, I’m Mrs. Southwest International 2016 and I’ll be competing at the Mrs. International Pageant in Jacksonville, FL next July. I’m excited!

I’ve loved the International system for a long time. I directed the Oklahoma pageant from 2006 until 2011 when we were told we’d be moving to Saudi Arabia. I reluctantly gave up my directorship. While I was directing, I was the only female director who’d never competed. At my last director’s meeting, the other directors suggested I should compete. I demured.

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But the idea remained in the back of my head. The competition age for Mrs. International is from 21-56. As I get closer to 56, I realize that I’m running out of eligibility to compete in this pageant. I discussed it with my husband, who agreed I should compete. I also have the strong encouragement of many friends, so I entered.

What I love about the Mrs. International system is the requirement to have a community service platform that you’ll promote throughout your year. I’ve been promoting walking for health for the past 10 years and that will be my pageant platform as well. I’ll be aligning myself with the Start! Walking Now program with the American Heart Association. I’ve been working with the AHA since 2008, mostly with the Go Red for Women program but, as happened the other day when I joined them at the Capitol for the tobacco rally, whatever they need my support for, they have. I love the message of the AHA. There are so many simple things we can do to ensure our heart remains healthy and knowledge is power! If you can share that message, and let people know what they can do, you help them.

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I’m really looking forward to this year as Mrs. Southwest International and the culmination of the year at the pageant next June. If you’re interested in competing for Mrs. International, many states have preliminary pageants you can participate in. You can find them at the Mrs. International website. If you decide to enter, let me know! 🙂

Save Lives California Tobacco Rally

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On Wednesday morning, bright and early, I carpooled with two other folks from the American Heart Association up to the state capitol in Sacramento. We were joining the many other groups that make up the Save Lives California Coalition for a tobacco rally.

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A special session was held to approve a package of six tobacco bills. 

The package included:

  • SBX2-5/ABX2-6, which would add electronic cigarettes to the existing definition of tobacco products;
  • SBX2-6/ABX2-7, which would add hotel lobbies, small businesses, break rooms and tobacco retailers to the list of smoke-free workplaces under state law;
  • SBX2-7/ABX2-8, which would increase the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products to 21 years old;
  • SBX2-8/ABX2-9, which would require all schools in the state to be tobacco-free;
  • SBX2-9/ABX2-10, which would allow local jurisdictions across the state to tax tobacco; and
  • SBX2-10/ABX2-11, which would create an annual Board of Equalization tobacco licensing fee program (California Healthline, 7/17).

Cigarette smoke related disease is the most preventable cause of death. The measures above should not only save money to the California health care system, it will also save lives. 

The day started with a press conference in the park. 

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Then we were broken up into groups and we visited the lawmakers on our list asking them to consider supporting the bills, giving them the reasons they should support them, and sharing our personal stories. 

My group included Jang, a heart attack, stroke, survivor, heart, kidney transplant wonderman and three medical students from UCSF: Rachel, Iris and David. 

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It took us a while to get cleared to go into the building.

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But when we did, my group and I visited all of the lawmakers on our list. I thought we did a great job of presenting our case and were received very well. Then Jang and I decided to visit one of our local assemblymen. He hadn’t received a visit from anyone so we were happy we stepped outside the box on that decision. 🙂

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I read this morning that the bills passed the Senate. I hope they will become laws and more control will be placed on the smoking and second hand smoking here in California.