A night for women’s health

With hors d’oeuvres and a focus on health topics specifically for women, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center is hosting “Amazing Woman: Be Your Best Self” on Thursday, April 5 from 5 to 8:30 p.m. at U.S. Airways Center.

The “Amazing Woman” event will have six breakout sessions covering all sorts of topics from headaches, healthy weight, and digestion to dealing with stress, being a successful caregiver and the newest hysterectomy treatments.

Keynote speaker is Abby Rike, a former contestant on “The Biggest Loser.” After Rike lost her husband and two children in a car crash in 2006, she decided to search for healing on NBC’s reality show in 2009. Her 2011 book, Working It Out: A Journey of Love, Loss, and Hope, starts with her life before the accident and documents her steps to recovery from traumatic loss.

The event is $15 and parking is free. To register, call ResourceLink at 1-877-602-4111. — Amy Vogelsang

Halle Heart Children’s Museum offers healthy fun for Girl Scouts

Girl Scouts who visit Halle Heart Children’s Museum in Tempe can meet requirements for a badge while learning about heart health and having fun.

At the museum, kids can touch, play and interact with educational exhibits, learning that “doing what it takes to be healthy can be fun!” says Dana Jirauch, executive director.

During a two-hour tour through the museum, Girl Scouts learn about the functions of the heart, how to take care of it, how to recognize warning signs of a heart attack and how to make healthy eating choices. “Lub Dub’s Journey to the Heart” is an experience with eight major exhibits through which a “heart guide” takes the trootps.

Sisters Meghan and Ashley Hufford pose as they experience Lub Dub's Journey to the Heart. Photo courtesy of Halle Heart Center Children's Museum.

In the Marketplace, kids get to shop for foods in a “grocery store” and ring up items with a scanner, tallying the total grams of fat. This helps kids learn about good and bad fats;  the challenge is to reach 20 grams of fat per meal. This allows kids to see how quickly fats can add up with poor eating decisions, Jirauch says.

“We’re not telling you not to eat foods, just to watch what you eat,” she says.

The kids also get to put a lunch together in the kitchen as they learn about healthy portions and eat a healthy snack. “We want to empower kids,” Jirauch said. “The power is in each one to choose to live healthy.”

“The Beat Goes On” gets kids actively learning about the importance of getting their heart rates up. They calculate their resting heart rate and then exercise to a video featuring the Phoenix Suns gorilla. They then calculate their new heart rate in order to see the change and realize the importance of everyday physical activity.

Other exhibits include a giant heart that teaches the circulatory system, giant animals with life-size hearts and realistic heart rates to compare the human heart with other animals and a mini golf zone in the “Stay on Course” exhibit focusing on the effects of smoking with the challenge of putting a golf ball through a giant artery.

Several badge options are available at Halle. Try-Its badge opportunities for Brownies include Healthy Habits, My Body and Eat Right, and Stay Healthy; some Junior badge opportunities include Food Power, First Aid and Fun, Fun and Fit and High on Life. The museum has been focused mostly on Brownies and Junior Girl Scouts, but is branching out to include Boy Scouts as well.

Tours are available on Saturdays for troops of 15 or more girls, or on weekdays after school for smaller groups. There are free, self-guided tours with maps, but Jirauch suggests that those tours be limited to 15 girls. To have the full experience, Jirauch recommends the guided tour.

The guided tour costs $10 for each girl, but chaperones are free. The tour includes a heart guide, a healthy snack and a Fun Patch featuring the museum’s mascot, Lub Dub. To sign up a troop or get more information visit the Halle Heart Children’s Museum website or call 602-414-2800. — Amy Vogelsang

Walk to show sharing is caring

In some way or another, all of us are connected to Down syndrome. Someone in our family may have been born with it. Perhaps we were lucky enough to know someone who has Down syndrome.

Down syndrome is a genetic condition in which a person has 47 chromosomes instead of the usual 46, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The condition can slow physical development and delay mental and social development.

On Saturday, Sept. 10, Sharing Down Syndrome Arizona is holding the 12th Annual Walk for Down Syndrome (formerly the Buddy Walk) at Tempe Diablo Stadium. The event will celebrate those with Down syndrome, build awareness and raise funds to help the nonprofit organization continue support services to families, communities and medical staff.

Registration for the event begins at 7:30am; the walk begins at 9:30am. Post-walk activities, which continue until 11:30am, will include bouncers, rock wall climbing, carnival games, dancing to the music of DJ Ron and a chance to meet Dora the Explorer and Sponge Bob Squarepants.

Register your team and/or donate at sharingds.org. You can also nominate an Outstanding Citizen with Down syndrome and/or an Outstanding Service Provider.

Sharing Down Syndrome Arizona offers monthly educational meetings in English and Spanish, hosts new-parent gatherings and delivers new-parent support packages. Information packets are provided to social workers at the Valley’s birthing hospitals and volunteers work to educate the medical community about the importance of delivering the diagnosis to parents in a positive manner. For more information, call 480-926-6500 or visit sharingds.org.

- Jordan Taffet

Shop for a cause

If your family is in the market for some new electronics, Friday, May 27 is the day to shop!

Best Buy stores in Scottsdale will be hosting the second annual Customer Appreciation Day to benefit cancer research, in association with Mirabel Hope for the Cause. A percentage of the store’s earnings for the day, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., will support the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare, which has conducted research and provided cancer care since 2001.

Special pricing will be available on items throughout the store.

Participating Best Buy stores are located at 15448 N. Pima Rd. and 10330 N. 90th St. in Scottsdale. — Sadie Smeck

Providing prenatal vitamins to expectant moms

Folate is present in enriched breads and grains.

Folate is a B vitamin essential to healthy pregnancy and yet 40.8 percent of women of reproductive age in Arizona don’t know that consuming it can prevent birth defects, according to statistics from the Arizona Family Planning Council.

Awareness is even lower among low-income women. And with recent cuts to health care, many expectant mothers do not have access to essential prenatal vitamins.

AFPC has launched a new community outreach program designed to provide prenatal vitamins to women who might not otherwise get them. For just $30 you can provide a year’s worth of prenatal vitamins with essential folic acid (folate’s synthetic form) to an Arizona woman who is getting ready to start a family.

According to the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements, folate helps produce and maintain new cells, which is why it is especially important during periods of rapid cell division and growth, such as infancy and pregnancy.

Since 1996, the Food and Drug Administration has required the addition of folic acid to enriched breads, cereals, flours, corn meals, pastas, rice and other grain products. Folate is also found in leafy green vegetables (like spinach and turnip greens), fruits (like citrus fruits and juices) and dried beans and peas.

AFPC is a Title X provider of reproductive life planning, birth control, healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, counseling and education, physical exams, pregnancy testing, infertility screening, long-acting and permanent birth control, limited testing and treatment for STDs and emergency contraception.

Emphasis is given to those most in need because of low income and other barriers to service. Learn more.

Double the community service

Flori (left) and Ilyena Witenstein (14) of Phoenix.

More than 100 artists will be displaying their wares along Central Avenue between Dunlap and the canal from 5 to 9pm Saturday, April 9 as part of Sunnyslope Art Walk.

Among them will be Ileyna & Flori Witenstein, creators of “Whoopies, Caps with a Cause!”

The twins in 2009.

We first wrote about the twins, who are the daughters of Dan & Julie Witenstein of Arizona Sunrays Gymnastics & Dance, in 2009. The girls, who came home from summer camp the year before with whooping cough, spent their convalescence creating magnets and jewelry with a bottle cap decorating kit. Their hobby turned into a community service project.

They donate a percentage of the proceeds of their sales to The Arizona Partnership for Immunization (TAPI ) and spread the word about their experience with whooping cough and the need for immunizations.

“From the sales of our ‘Whoopies’ just this year, we have donated close to $400 to Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Desert Mission Community Health Center (in Sunnyslope), and to TAPI,” the girls told us.

For the Sunnyslope Art Walk, they’ll be located in the parking lot near Grinder’s Coffee at Central & Dunlap. The event features paintings, photography, mixed media, fiber/wearable, metal work and much more. Parking is available at Sunnyslope Village Center (115 E. Dunlap), Sunnyslope High School (35 E Dunlap) and Cowden Center (9202 N 2nd St.). Learn more at sunnyslopecommunity.org.

Spring cleaning? Bring gently used items to Kohl’s

Kohl’s Department Stores and Swift Charities for Children have launched a Valleywide campaign to collect gently used clothing, shoes and soft good household items to raise money for Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Donations will be collected at any Kohl’s location.

Simply bag and tie your donations and drop them in the Swift Charities for Children donation box located on all Kohl’s parking lots through April 30. Swift charities will weigh the collected items, sell them by the pound and donate the net proceeds.

Items that will be accepted include clothing (all sizes), accessories, paired shoes, small household items (including books) and linens.

Swift Charities for Children is the only 100 percent not-forprofit program with Valleywide collection sites that allow the community to make contributions to a variety of local children’s organizations, including Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

Phoenix Children’s is one of the 10 largest children’s hospitals in the country and provides specialty and sub-specialty inpatient, outpatient, trauma and emergency care to patients throughout Arizona and other Southwestern states.

Hydrate for a cause

Beginning April 1, 10 cents from every case of Bashas’ water sold will be donated to the Desert Southwest Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). Monies raised during the promotion, which ends June 30, will help fund research to find a cure for type 1 (juvenile) diabetes.

This is the second year that Bashas’ is holding the charitable water campaign to benefit JDRF. “We’re honored to be JDRF’s grocery partner,” says Edward Basha, vice president of retail operations for Bashas’. “We’ve had the privilege of supporting JDRF for more than 17 years, and our relationship continues to grow.”

“We truly appreciate Bashas’ generosity and support of our chapter and our community as a whole,” says Jenna Smith, JDRF’s corporate development manager.

To find a Bashas’ grocery store near you, visit bashas.com.

Life without food no barrier to 10-year-old’s quest to help others

Nathaniel Ross. Photo courtesy of the Ross family.

Nathaniel Ross turns 10 on Tuesday. Most kids his age would be looking forward to pizza and birthday cake. But Nathaniel can’t eat.

He suffers from an autoimmune disease called Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE). The disease confuses his white blood cells into thinking food is a parasite. When he eats, his body attacks itself and he gets very sick. He must receive most of his nutrition from a special formula by way of a nasogastric tube, or NG tube.

To celebrate his birthday, Nathaniel told his family he wanted raise funds to support research on Eosinophilic Disorders.

From 6 to 8pm on Wednesday, Dec. 8, the Chick-fil-A at 1664 S. Stapley Dr. in Mesa, will donate 20 percent of sales to the Campaign Urging Research for Eosinophilic Disease (the CURED Foundation) . In order for CURED to receive credit, you must print this flyer and bring it with you to the restaurant.

Nathaniel’s book, Adventures of Foodman, will be on sale for a $10 donation (cash or check). It’s about a super hero finding out that he has EoE. All proceeds will go to the CURED Foundation. (You can also purchase his book at curedfoundation.org.)

Nathaniel’s other birthday wish is to collect toys and music items for Cardon Children’s Medical Center in Mesa. Nathaniel knows firsthand how something simple like a toy can be a big distraction, bringing joy during a stressful time.

Drop-off boxes will be available at the Dec. 8 event and also at several other locations.

JBS Dolls & Gifts at 116 N. Lindsay Rd. #3, in Mesa will accept donations Dec. 6-Jan. 31.

Music & Arts Center at 891 E. Baseline Rd. #101 in Gilbert will accept donations through Dec. 23. (Many items can be purchased here at a low price to go to the Music Therapy Department at the hospital.)

The UPS Store at 1230 E. Baseline Rd. #103 in Mesa also will accept donations through Dec. 23.

Follow Nathaniel’s journey on the Ross family’s blog, ourjourneywithee.blogspot.com.

 

Watch our interview with Nathan and members of his family.

Help your child be a rock star

Health care. It is all over the news, in our towns and in our homes. The debates are confusing, depressing and leave the general populace feeling just a bit helpless.

How about a health issue we CAN do something about?

Child obesity is hitting levels unseen in human history. According to a recent study, parents may soon outlive their overweight kids. This issue has even caught the attention of the White House, with Michelle Obama working to get schools to plant gardens and talks of bringing back the President’s Challenge award program.

And this weekend, Phoenix Children’s Hospital will offer its own solution to the problem of child obesity with the hospital’s kick-off event for the Kid’s Rock Stars program.

Kid’s Rock Stars promotes increasing activity for children age’s six to 12. The walking/running program begins in elementary schools and asks students to track their activities throughout the year. The kids set a goal to walk or jog 25.2 miles. Since its inception, the program has grown to over 50 schools, clubs and organizations with over 2,800 kids participating in the program valley-wide.

The kick off event for the Kid’s Rock Stars program will be held this Saturday, October 24 at Tempe Marketplace between Cadillac Ranch and San Felipe’s Cantina from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. The event is free and open to the public with activities such as: face painting, yo-yo demonstrations, relay races, fun runs, soccer shoot out, bouncy house, traffic/pedestrian safety activity, car seat information and raffle prizes. Demonstrations/activities will be held in English and Spanish.

Children that participate in the Phoenix Children’s Hospital Kid’s Rock program have the opportunity to participate in the main even – the Kid’s Rock portion of the Phoenix Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon. Participants can become full marathon finishers by completing the 25.2-mile training program prior to the January 16 event, or they can just run, walk or jog the one-mile course on race day. Every child is a winner and will be rewarded with an official race number, T-shirt, goodie bag, and medal – just for finishing. Registration is $25 before October 31 and $35 until January 10.