STURDY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL AND THE HOCKOMOCK AREA YMCA COLLABORATE TO PREVENT DIABETES

ATTLEBORO, MA, June 16, 2014 – Celebrated every June, Men’s Health Month encourages men to seek regular medical advice and make other healthy decisions in order to avoid preventable health problems. In honor of Men’s Health Month, Sturdy Memorial Hospital and the Hockomock Area YMCA are reinforcing to residents that they should get their annual checkups and health screenings, engage in physical activity, and eat healthy diets in order to prevent diseases like type 2 diabetes.

            According to Kimberly Cohen, Senior Director of Association Health Innovation at the Hockomock Area YMCA, “Sometimes people avoid regular checkups and conversations with their doctors because they don’t want to hear that their blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, and other measurements are trending in the wrong direction, and that change is needed. But knowing your health status, and acting on it, is important. Healthy behavior modifications can take time and effort, but the alternative—managing diabetes and its complications, continuously checking blood glucose, injecting insulin—can be a greater challenge.”

The YMCA Diabetes Prevention Program, offered at the Hockomock Area YMCA, “identifies barriers to healthy living and develops manageable solutions to increase physical activity and improve nutrition, helping prevent diabetes altogether,” says Cohen.

            Physicians at Sturdy Memorial Hospital are referring appropriate patients into the Hockomock Area YMCA’s Diabetes Prevention Program. For more information about the program, visit www.hockymca.org.

Sturdy Memorial Hospital is a full-service, independent, financially stable, not-for-profit, acute care community hospital in Attleboro, Massachusetts.

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