In Dekalb County, the rate of diabetes is over 30%.
Hypertension, very similar.
If you take a drive through the zip code of 30032,
you may ride for a while
before you find a place that specifically
has fresh fruit and vegetables
which means racial and ethnic approaches
to community health.
My mother was really rapidly declining
due to, in no small part, to diabetes.
Our program allows participants to come in
and to work at least in two dimensions:
that is the fitness, and then with the nutrition.
I really feel that many of the members of our community,
particularly those who are seniors, are overlooked.
I'm very passionate
when I drive into that community every day
that I'm going to give it the best that I can.
Because if someone had intervened for my family,
their outcome might have been different.
We're bringing healthy food to our communities.
When you look at the reasons
why "food deserts" exist,
we see a large concentration of them
in the south part of the county.
Fresh on Dek is one of the core
initiatives of the REACH initiative.
"Food deserts" are low income areas
that do not have access to healthy food options.
There is a lot of fast food restaurants,
as well as smaller retailers that do not
necessarily have fresh fruits and vegetables.
There are a lot of issues that you can have
with heart disease, with diabetes,
obesity and things like that
that can be highly impacted by your diet.
So we have strategically identified
partners within the community.
So the mobile farmers market
could stop to provide fresh fruits and vegetables.
I'm really proud of the work that
we're doing to bring healthy foods to our communities.
We are improving health outcomes
for the citizens of DeKalb County, Georgia.