Health and wellness fair connects

employers to health resources

Organizers hope state’s employers will encourage healthy habits among employees,
drive ‘significant change’ in Mississippi’s health rankings
Story by Isabelle Altman
ialtman@cdispatch.com

W
hen Christie
Lawrence learned
Mississippi Busi-
ness Group on Health had not
hosted events for employers in
northern Mississippi, she want-
ed to change that.
The president of Starkville-
based consulting firm Surge
Advisors had worked with MS-
BGH, putting on resource fairs
and seminars in Jackson and
on the coast to help employers
implement healthy habits in the
workplace and connect with
businesses in the health and
wellness industry. Now, she
wanted to give access to those
same resources to Golden Trian-
gle businesses.
“The whole focus of the
Mississippi Business Group on
Health is really just trying to
rally employers to help drive
change,” Lawrence said. “[...]
To learn more about health and
wellness, because you can do Photos courtesy Michael Stewart (EMCC)
a lot with your health benefits, Representatives from area businesses network at the first Golden Triangle Health and Wellness Resource Fair at the Communiversity
the way the plan is set up, to on East Mississippi Community College’s campus last October. The fair allowed employers in Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay counties to
foster and encourage more pre- get an idea of health and wellness businesses and resources in the area they could partner with to encourage healthy habits among
vention, more focus on personal employees. Organizers Christie Lawrence of Surge Advisors in Starkville and Adrienne Morris of the Golden Triangle Human Resource
accountability.” Association both said they hope to organize another such fair this year. Below: Airmen from the Columbus Air Force Base speak with
Lawrence and representa- representatives at the fair.
tives from MSBGH joined Gold-
en Triangle Human Resource health problems plaguing Mis-
Association last October to sissippi, like obesity, diabetes
host the area’s first Health and and heart disease.
Wellness Resource Fair at the “It’s all about, ‘how do you
Communiversity on East Mis- provide better quality but also
sissippi Community College’s reduce the cost?’” Lawrence
campus. Lawrence said doz- said. “[...] The employers are
ens of employers attended the key, because their health benefit
event, where they sat through plan basically helps drive em-
panel discussions and browsed ployee behavior.”
more than 50 exhibits from area Employers who filled out an
health care centers, gyms, yoga exit survey after the fair said
studios and more. they were surprised at the num-
“The participants upon arriv- ber of health resources in the
al could visit the various tables area. More than 85 percent said
and get information from the they would attend the fair again
vendors directly,” said GTHRA in 2020, while the rest said they
President Adrienne Morris, “and would at least consider it.
be able to network, exchange For Charles Sylvest, educa-
contact information, find out tion pastor at Fairview Baptist
what products, what resources Church in Columbus, the fair
they had available and what was a good reminder of ways to
they could provide for their stay active at work. In particu-
employees.” lar, he remembered a panel by
In a state that ranks 49th a Mississippi State University
in health care, Lawrence said Ph.D. student who showed practice what we’ve been some exercises that we could san Hadaway, human resources
it’s important to help business them different exercises people preaching,’” Sylvest said. “She use in our offices.” manager at West Point-based
representatives find ways to can do at their desks. got up and (demonstrated) Another panel on the nega- trucking company Southern Ion-
encourage healthy habits among “She said, ‘Get up out of different sets of stretching. […] tive health effects of sitting too ics. “Sitting disease” stuck out in
employees that could prevent your chairs. We’re going to So we physically went through much had a similar effect on Su- See FAIR, 2
2 SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2020 The Dispatch • www.cdispatch.com HEALTH & WELLNESS

How to provide your children with healthy meals on a tight budget

Story by Yue Stella Yu according to Feeding America,
syu@cdispatch.com a national food bank network. Feeding programs
The rates remained above 20

O
n a Thursday morn-
ing, Jane Scott picks
up a package of
chicken from the freezer. She
places it next to a brown bag
full of food and then hands it to
the family waiting at the win-
dow, free of charge.
Scott is the president of
Project Homestead in West
Point — a food pantry offering
food to families in need. The
program mostly enrolls families
eligible for the state Supplemen-
tal Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP) benefits and provides
each family with a month’s
worth of groceries based on
their family size. Many of those
families have children.
“We have 44 kids […] from
zero to five years old,” she said.
“We have 188 children from six
to 18.”
Project Homestead is one
of many organizations in the
Golden Triangle area that help
feed low-income families. The
need for those feeding programs
is particularly evident in Missis-
sippi, where the statewide child
food insecurity rate hovered
at 22.9 percent — higher than
most other states — in 2017, the
latest when data is available,
Jane Scott, president of Project Homestead in West Point, helps
volunteers at the food pantry prepare bags of groceries to the
families that come looking on a Thursday morning.
percent among all of Clay (26.6),
Lowndes (23.1) and Oktibbeha
(20.2) counties. As of 2017, one
in five Mississippians was strug-
gling with hunger. One in four
children was food insecure.
Many children rely on their
school meals under the National
School Breakfast and Lunch
programs administered by the
U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA), but when school is out,
students in need often have to
turn to summer meal sites to
stay fed. School districts and
eligible groups can apply to
run those sites following USDA
standards and be reimbursed by
the agency.
More than 850 sites in
Mississippi were providing US-
DA-approved feeding programs
as of May 26. Only 43 sites
were located in the Golden Tri-
angle area and only 26 of them
were still running at that time.
Where summer meal sites are
lacking, community initiatives,
such as Project Homestead,
are stepping up to fill the void.
Other regional groups also are
planning to offer free grab-and-
go meals amid the pandemic.
Stephanie Gibson, Christian
mission director at the YMCA,
Photo by Yue Stella Yu/Dispatch Staff
Jim Chandler, volunteer at Project Homestead, delivers two brown
bags full of food to a family waiting outside the window.
said the organization partners
with the Mississippi Food
Network, a Jackson-based food
bank that provides local food
pantries with products at a low-
er cost or for free. Gibson said
the organization plans to offer
summer meals during June and
July for school-aged children,
providing each child with five
lunch meals once a week. The
site served roughly 60 kids a
day and about 300 meals a
week last year.
Ron Thornton, CEO of the
Golden Triangle Boys and Girls
Club, said the organization
plans to serve summer meals
but has yet set a date to reopen. instead of starch.
The Columbus location could
serve roughly 300 meals each
for its breakfast and lunch pro-
grams. The Starkville and West
Point locations would serve 100 them, but it’s not body nutrition
to 200 meals for each program.
Balanced diet
A balanced meal should
include five components —
grain, protein, dairy, fruits and
vegetables — which are vital for
children’s growth, said Ginny
Hill, a licensed dietitian and
child nutrition director at the
Starkville-Oktibbeha Consol-
idated School District. The
district could offer about 1,700
breakfasts and 1,700 lunches a
month during the summer, she
said. The portion needs to be
balanced, too.
“We want to make sure they
have good portion control,”
she said. “If you were to think
about how much meat for your
student (per serving), you could
think about the size of a deck
of cards, that would be about a
available in the Golden
Triangle area
n USDA-approved sum-
mer meal sites
Varying times and locations
www.fns.usda.gov/meal-
s4kids
n Food pantries in all
Mississippi counties
myresources.mdhs.ms.gov/
MRProviderServices/Index-
?service=Food
Photo by Yue Stella Yu/Dispatch Staff
n Project Homestead,
West Point
9-11 a.m., Tuesdays and
two- to three-ounce serving.”
Thursdays
Gibson said the protein com-
222 Mary Holmes Drive,
ponent, such as a chicken breast
West Point
or hamburger patty, should be
Jane Scott, 662-418-1020
the main dish of a meal, and the
proper size is about the palm n YMCA, Columbus
of the children’s hands. Fruits No set time or location yet
and vegetables, she said, should 602 2nd Avenue North,
be about three-fourths of the Columbus
protein size. www.columbus-ymca.com/
“Your grain […] could be a
roll on the side or it could come n Golden Triangle Boys
as a tortilla you had your chick- and Girls Club
en wrapped in,” she said. No set time or location yet
Parents should also encour- 1815 14th Avenue North,
age water drinking instead of Columbus
sugary drinks or carbohydrates 662-244-7090
and eating green vegetables 911 Lynn Lane, Starkville
662-615-9980
“This is the most unhealthy 634 East West Brook, West
thing that you can do for a Point
growing child,” she said. “It 662-418-7285
will fill them quickly. Kids love www.bgcgoldentri.org/
for their brain, for their growing right now,” Hill said, “that might
organs.” be something the parents could
repurpose at dinner time. May-
Eat healthy within a tight be steam those or put them on
the salad for everybody.”
budget For Gibson, parents should
For many cash-strapped
incorporate vital nutrition into
families, however, a healthy
their meals whenever they can.
diet can be costly. At Project
Canned vegetables, although
Homestead, Scott said she has
not as nutritious as fresh pro-
seen families who rely on SNAP
benefits as low as $14 to $20 a duce, can come at a lower cost.
month. “Try at least once a day to
“Good Lord, you can’t buy get a palm-sized protein into
milk and bread,” she said. “I your child,” she said. “And then
don’t have any idea on how try to complement it [with]
they do that.” something green.”
To design a healthy diet for Thornton said families can
their kids, Hill said families with also consider growing their own
a tight budget should take ad- food.
vantage of the feeding programs “Now is a good time for
and repurpose some ingredients gardening,” he said. “(It can)
for later use. get you some fresh (products),
“Even though their child get you out and do something
might not eat the raw carrots different.”

Fair
Continued from Page 1
her mind particularly because truck
drivers spend so much time sitting in
their vehicles.
“If you’re in a sedentary position or
you’re a truck driver, you’re seated at
work, let’s say eight to 10 hours a day,”
she said. “And then people go home
and are seated watching TV or eating
dinner.”
Hadaway said she used some of the
information and tips from the panels
she viewed in her “Wellness Wednes-
day” memos she sends employees every
week. The whole fair impressed her so
much she became a member of MSB-
GH to gain access to their “toolbox” of
resources.
“My responsibility is to make sure
that my employees have the best bene-
fits and support and resources possible
to be able to excel at their jobs,” she
said. “And wellness […] allows people
to excel. The healthier you are, the
further you’ll go.”
Lawrence and Morris also empha-
sized networking opportunities avail-
able to the fair’s attendees, suggesting
businesses could partner with health
care facilities or gyms to provide
discounted memberships and other
“perks” for employees.
They plan on holding another such
fair this fall, with a few changes. In
particular, Lawrence wants to hold the
panels and exhibits at different times,
while Morris said she wants to begin
spreading the word about the event ear-
lier, so more area businesses sign up.
They added the COVID-19 pandemic
will affect how employers and health
care professionals think about health
benefits.
“The next conversation will definitely
be, after COVID-19 is over with, how
do you now view your health insurance
programs or different wellness programs
that you offer to employees?” Morris
Photo courtesy Michael Stewart (EMCC)
said. “Will you keep the same thing, or Representatives from area businesses network at the first Golden Triangle Health
are you going to try to change it?” and Wellness Resource Fair at the Communiversity on East Mississippi Community
Lawrence believes Mississippi will College’s campus last October. Amy Billingsley speaks with a dental representative.
see renewed interest in wellness and
preventing health issues before they “If the employers got together and based on the interactions that I’ve had
occur — but employers are absolutely worked collaboratively, they could with health care providers, they’re will-
critical in supporting that interest. drive significant change,” she said. “And ing to work with them.”
HEALTH & WELLNESS
Locally produced food, goods are witnessing “healthy” growth
Story by Slim Smith
ssmith@cdispatch.com
I
n 1918, America faced its greatest
pandemic, the Spanish Flu outbreak,
which ultimately claimed 600,000
lives in the U.S. Yet while the nation’s
understanding of viruses at the time left
the nation vulnerable, in one sense it was
better equipped for a public health crisis
than the COVID-19 virus we face today.
Back then, in an era before refriger-
ated trucks and interstate highways, the
food supply was almost exclusively local-
ly-produced. That was especially true in
rural areas. People of that era knew how
to grow their own food, sew their own
clothes and provide for themselves other
necessities not readily available in their
community.
One of the challenges of COVID-19
has been to the nation’s food supply,
which has struggled with production and
transportation to meet the demands of
the public.
For more than a dozen years, Alison
Buehler of Starkville has been on a cru-
sade to help Mississippians reclaim those
lost skills, most recently as director of the
Homestead Education Center, which has
been providing workshops, exhibitions
and seminars since 2012. For all those ef-
Photo by Slim Smith/Dispatch Staff
Eliza Boyd originally started making goat
milk soap a year ago, because she had
read it soothed eczema and her seven-
year-old sister has eczema.
The Dispatch • www.cdispatch.com SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2020 3
forts, few things have spiked the interest
in the self-sustaining lifestyle Buehler has
preached than COVID-19.
“I’ve seen more gardens here in the
Starkville area this spring than I have in
20 years,” Buehler said. “With the shelter
at home orders, people were home more
and had more time to learn the things
that we’ve been teaching for years.”
Buehler’s mission is not only to help
Mississippians produce more of the foods
and products they consume, but develop
a healthier lifestyle in the process.
“I think because of the coronavirus,
people are more aware of the food
chain, where things are coming from.
What they are discovering is the clos-
er our food supply is to us, the more
simplified it is. And when you grow your
own food, you know what’s in it. I think
that appeals to a lot of people. They’re
becoming more aware.”
For some, it goes beyond growing Photo by Slim Smith/Dispatch Staff
their own healthy food to meeting a Eliza Boyd has 15 different varieties of soaps and three kinds of bath bombs, which
specific need and even turning it into a she sells each Saturday at the Starkville Community Market.
business venture. Eliza Boyd is a great
example of that. in Columbus and Starkville and even views it as more or less a hobby.
Boyd, 15, lives near Starkville at her though she’s learned volumes about how “It’s a fun hobby to have,” she said.
family’s eight-acre farmstead. The family to run and operate a business, she still “And it’s a way to be creative.”
of eight grows their own fruits and veg-
etables, harvests eggs from their chick-
ens and has adopted a self-sustaining
lifestyle. A year ago, Eliza added her own
wrinkle.
“I was reading about goat milk,” she
said. “One of the things I read said that
goat’s milk was very good in treating
eczema. My little sister had eczema
pretty bad. So that’s when I got the idea.
My dad got me a book about goat’s milk
and I did a ton of research. I decided to
try it..”
Boyd bought a pair of goats with her
own money and began producing goat
milk soap. At the time, helping her sister
was the main motivation. Now, a year
later, it’s progressed beyond that.
“It’s a pretty complicated process and
it’s not cheap to make,” she said. “In
addition to lye and goats milk you have a
lot of different oils that are used. Each oil
has its own properties and uses. It’s a lot
of chemistry and a lot of calculations just
getting the formula right. Too much lye
and it burns the skin. Too little and you
have liquid soap. If you don’t have the
right amount of an oil, you don’t get the
benefit of it. It took a lot of time to get it
just right.”
The actual soap-making takes about
an hour, but the soap requires six to eight
weeks to cure and set up enough to be
cut into individual bars.
She sells her soap at farmers markets
4 SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2020 The Dispatch • www.cdispatch.com HEALTH & WELLNESS

Local gyms and trainers adapting

fitness programs to quarantine, while
others are falling by the wayside
Story by Ben Portnoy
bportnoy@cdispatch.com

S
TARKVILLE — Cyn-
thia Mutch readily
admits she’s no
internet wizard, but as the
Marketing and Member-
ship Director at the Frank
P. Phillips Memorial YMCA
in Columbus, Mutch has
adapted to her new role
as the czar of the gym’s
highly-successful YouTube
workout channel.
“I’m kind of new to this,
so I have to kind of look,
but there’s some analytics
here that I can access if I
remember where they are,”
she said through a laugh.
Moving toward more
online content, the Colum-
bus YMCA and other local
fitness entities have moved
increasingly more digital
in an effort to reach their
normal clientele as the
COVID-19 pandemic has
put restrictions on gyms
across the state. Having
created the site in recent
years, Mutch said it re-
mained relatively dormant
until the pandemic hit, but
with gyms shuttered due
to Mississippi’s “shelter
in place” ordinances, the
channel offered a per-
fect way for the YMCA’s
trainers to reach those
who normally attend their
workout classes or those
who might be looking into
a membership.
Among those activities
listed on the gym’s You-
Tube page are legs and abs
workouts, seated fitness
options and a 20-minute
morning stretch.
“What we’ve found is
the videos are getting a
lot of views and a lot of
response,” Mutch said,
referring to the over 500
views the site has received.
“People were commenting
and saying they were using
the videos everyday and
Salem Gibson records a video for the Frank P. Phillips
YMCA’s YouTube page.
they were really thankful
for us so we’ve been mak-
ing more videos.”
Patricia Cartwright, the
owner and operator of Get
Right With Cartwright in
Starkville, has also moved
her practice increasingly
online as her ability to
meet with clients in home
gyms and other areas has
become more and more
difficult.
Cartwright said she
saw an initial lull in her
business with the transition
to more virtual workouts,
client numbers have
stabilized as users grow
more accustomed to her
practices.
“It’s been very uncer-
tain and kind of crazy, but
I was able to transition
pretty seamlessly to online
training, also known as
virtual training,” she told
The Dispatch. “I’ve done
this with my classes; I’ve
done this with my personal
training clients and then
my already online clients
who do not live in the
Starkville area, things were
unchanged for them.”
While Cartwright and
the YMCA have moved
digital and anticipate con-
tinuing to do so into the
Photo by Ben Portnoy/Dispatch Staff
future, the pandemic hasn’t
been easy on others in the
fitness business. Shawn
Berry — the owner of Any-
time Fitness in Columbus
— has seen a mass exodus
of employees as his doors
have had to remain closed
in recent weeks. Working
in a more corporate struc-
ture, Anytime Fitness has
offered some online tools
at a more national level,
but with few employees on
the ground in Columbus,
Berry said it will be difficult
to maintain the previous
practice he had running.
“We wanted to do
our part and try and curb
(coronavirus) and hopefully
get rid of it,” he said of
closing his doors initially.
“But bottom-line is, it’s
killing our business.”
While some gyms
will face hardships in
reopening, those that
have embraced the digital
have seemingly found a
new way to reach current
and future members, one
YouTube channel or online
transition at a time.
“Now that we’re open,
we don’t want to just stop,”
Mutch said. “We want to
continue uploading videos
to our YouTube channel.”