November is Diabetes Awareness Month in the United States and with good reason – the ailment affects nearly 24 million Americans, a number including forty-one children diagnosed with type 1 daily.
And since South Florida is an area of concentration for the disease, there is no shortage of influencers working hard to raise awareness and push individual care-taking, particularly with chronic diseases like diabetes.
Therefore, we sat down and chatted with David Odige, founder of non-profit I-PhiT, whose mission is to help implement public health initiatives among Miami’s young inner-city population.
What is I-PhiT’s vision?
I-PhiT stands for ‘Implementing Public Health Initiatives Throughout.’ It shares the name of my college fraternity, Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc., who we’re teaming up to expand this movement nationwide. We’ll have a joint board of directors and collaborate on initiatives like the St. Jude’s Walk.
Basically, I want to get people to be educated about their health through events promoting various public health initiatives, and to boost their awareness so they make better health choices. i-PhiT’s vision is to promote health and quality of life for all populations.
It doesn’t matter if they’re young or old, either. I just want to actually inform anyone with choices to make better decisions, as well as focus on the 2012 National Health Observances.
What is I-PhiT doing for Diabetes Awareness Month?
We held out 2nd annual I-PhiT Health Fair last Monday at North Miami Senior High Adult Education Center, where we partnered up with Humana and Florida Heart Research Institute to perform blood pressure checks and glucose testing for the adult education class, which spans from age 24 all the way to 70.
And while its Diabetes Awareness Month, it doesn’t mean we stop here. We’ve organized several health fairs, including one at Hubert o. Sibley Elementary School, where we provide cholesterol screening, glucose testing, and blood pressure checks. At Sibley, we screened 76 people, all of which can use these check-ups to increase their own awareness of the disease.
You’ve done some work to promote Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative, which is meant to combat obesity in children, an early catalyst of diabetes.
During the month of September, we celebrated Michelle Obama’s initiative in Boston, where we organized the first annual I-PhiT Gymboree at the Cleveland Community Center. At the end of the event, which lasts an hour, each group has experienced different exercises – jump rope, soccer, basketball, etc.
This helps promote overall health awareness at an early age, which includes risks for diseases like type 2 diabetes.
But you’re not stopping there. What else does I-PhiT have planned for the near future?
We’re going to Haiti with Mayor of North Miami Andre Pierre, the Purforce Foundation and Donovan Campbell from Channel 7 News on November 30. We’re going to visit several cities, giving away shoes collected under the fatherhood initiative I helped within June. We collected over 3500 shoes, and even figures like Tim Hardaway donated shoes to the cause.
Haiti is only one of the countries we’re visited or have visited. For instance, we have an I-PhiT ambassador, Marcela Didonato-Patterson, who is going to Ecuador in December. She’ll be tackling the Let’s Move initiative over there.
We are planning an additional trip to Haiti with a non-profit organization called Health Through Walls and former Miami Dolphins linebacker Twan Sanchez Russell to visit the juvenile prison in Port-au-Prince. The goal is to create a reading center to help improve youth health through literacy. Health Through Walls’s primary focus for this effort is the identification, prevention, and management of infectious disease, especially HIV and tuberculosis.
We’ve also worked in Bangladesh, Thailand, Haiti, the Bahamas, Peru and Afghanistan thanks to the financial help of numerous frat brothers.
And we all know a diabetic foot should never walk barefooted. For more information, check out i-PhiT’s website here.
Do you know what you need when setting up a new medical practice?