Everywhere we look these days we hear news about the nation’s challenge with overweight and obese children. First Lady Michelle Obama, with her Let’s Move! campaign, has made raising healthier children and reducing childhood obesity her personal mission. Wal-Mart announced recently that it would work harder to be part of the solution.  In fact, every one of us must take steps to create an environment for balancing foods coming in with the calories we spend at work and play.

Thanks to all of the SMArt Kids participants for their attendance at our February 15th session – it was a great session!  We had several new faces along with our returning SMArt Kids from our January appointment.  Everyone, parent and child alike, did a stellar job contributing to the discussion and asking many important questions.  Julie Seed, our nutritionist, and I were impressed with the level of involvement, especially given it was only our second encounter,

I am pleased to say we had a very successful first shared medical appointment at the West Roxbury site.  Congratulations to all of our super-star patients and their families for coming, participating, and most importantly – for working so well together to come up with some fabulous ideas about how to be healthy!

Thank you to Fernanda, our nutritionist, for giving the group some excellent education about lipid (cholesterol) levels and how these are affected by the foods that we eat. 

Many people believe that an eye exam is limited to evaluating your eyesight—how well you can see and whether you need glasses or contact lenses—and identifying diseases specific to the eye. Thorough eye exams, however, are important not just for detecting vision problems, many of which begin without noticeable symptoms, but also for your overall health. A thorough eye exam can detect a number of serious medical conditions, such as glaucoma and macular degeneration as well as common eye conditions such as cataracts.

Hello! We are excited to introduce to you a unique program for children and their parents called SMArt Kids, based on Harvard Vanguard’s innovative Shared Medical Appointment (SMA) model of care. A SMA is a medical appointment that also has a group component, providing 8-10 patients the opportunity to learn from the doctor as well as gain support, encouragement, and ideas from other members of the group who have similar experiences and challenges.