Hospital Lunch n’ Learn Series promoting wellness, healthy community

A person doesn’t always have to be sick to go to the hospital.

A Lunch n’ Learn Series kicking off at Atrium Health Navicent Baldwin will focus on promoting wellness and, in turn, a healthier community.

Joy Moten-Thomas, assistant vice president for government relations at Atrium Health, said three upcoming events will offer community members an opportunity to have a nice lunch while taking part in a quality educational session at the same time.

The first Lunch n’ Learn session will be held Aug. 1 at noon in the hospital cafeteria. The topic will be “Let’s Talk About Our Heart” featuring guest speaker Dr. Rebecca Gay.

Moten-Thomas said the session will focus on heart health and how to deal with living with heart failure, and it will also highlight the Baldwin campus’ designation as a Remote Treatment Stroke Center by the Georgia Department of Public Health’s Office of EMS and Trauma.

“We saw this as an opportunity to plug that designation for our Baldwin campus and also introduce the community to the director of our ER, which is Dr. Rebecca Gay,” Moten-Thomas said.

On Oct. 3, the campus will host “Living with Diabetes” with guest speakers Mary Ann Branigan (RN, ASN) and Julie Deese (RN, BSN, CDCES). This event will also be held in the cafeteria.

“[This session] is focusing on living with diabetes and making the appropriate choices so that you’re not handicapped by your disease, and learning about appropriate eating habits and exercising to reduce your A1C levels so that maybe you can work your way out of having the diagnosis of diabetes,” Moten-Thomas said. “I’ve learned in my tenure with the organization that Baldwin has a high rate of diabetic individuals in the community, much higher than some of the other middle Georgia counties, so we saw this as an opportunity to spotlight this … and hopefully, we can get some folks educated on how they can possibly turn their diagnosis around.”

In December, “Eating Healthy During the Holidays” will be held at Vaughn Chapel Baptist Church, 1980 N. Jefferson Street. Guest speakers will be dieticians Millie Smith and Martha Larkin Kelly, and they will offer tips for making healthy decisions during the tempting holidays.

“We were able to identify some of our in-house talent that will be lecturing on that topic in December,” Moten-Thomas said.

While the December event will wrap up the 2023 calendar, Moten-Thomas said they are already working on the 2024 calendar with plans to host six events a year, one on the first Tuesday of every other month.

Each session will be 30 minutes, and there will also be an opportunity for the audience to ask questions.

“It’s not just a doctor just speaking to the audience, but it also gives the audience the opportunity to ask questions…,” Moten-Thomas said. “They’re only 30 minutes long, but our doctors or our educators are willing to stay longer if folks still have questions, but we want folks to be able to get in and out during their lunch hour and get back to work if need be.”

Moten-Thomas said in addition to the health and wellness aspects of the free sessions, the events will also serve as a way of letting the community know that the hospital is open for business post-COVID. She said she hopes that the sessions provide people with a chance to familiarize or refamiliarize themselves with the services the hospital offers, from the gift shop to the cafeteria, lab services and so much more.

“We really want the community to know that we are back open,” she said. “There was a time where we had to basically close the campus down for health and safety reasons, but we want folks to know that we are open, and you can come and eat in our facility, you can walk on our track, you don’t have to be sick to come to our Baldwin campus.”

And from a health perspective, she said the series will complement other initiatives well, including the “Walk with a Doc” activity that is currently happening on the third Saturday of each month.

“We are trying to implement some health and wellness activities for the community that cost the consumer or the local resident absolutely nothing to participate in,” she said.

To RSVP for the sessions email [email protected]. For more information, call 478-776-4641.

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