Nancy and the Reverend Tom Hutto have completed enough miles on the walking path to earn 100-Miled Club t-shirts.

Ask the people of Winnsboro, South Carolina, what they have in common with the people in New York City, and they might be hard-pressed for an answer. Yet there’s one tie that binds the residents of the tiny Southern town not only to New Yorkers, but to every segment of the U.S. population. Obesity. Across this country increasing numbers of Americans are tipping the scales at increasing weights.

Yet the citizens of Winnsboro and the other small communities in rural Fairfield County are fortunate to have an educational program that was created to address the obesity problem in their community. The Right Weigh to Health was introduced three years ago by the John A. Martin Primary Health Care Center, a primary health care facility managed by the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. Established in conjunction with a number of agencies in Fairfield County, the program’s objectives are to increase awareness of the health risks of obesity and to offer tools to individuals interested in making lifestyle changes.

One component of the program is conducting body mass index (BMI) screenings in the community. The height/weight assessment has been provided at festivals, during health screenings at the local Wal-Mart, and in the last year for every 11th grader enrolled in Fairfield County schools. “We explain to people how a high BMI puts them more at risk for health problems, and how even losing 10 or 20 pounds can decrease their risk for certain diseases,” said Sandy Kammermann, M.S., Ed.S., Education and Research Director at the center and an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.

Determined to provide local residents with a tangible tool for weight reduction, the center joined forces with a number of local organizations to create a walking path. Complete with attractive landscaping and welcoming park benches, the path is located outside the John A. Martin Primary Health Care Center on the grounds of Fairfield Memorial Hospital. “There were many people that just needed to start walking, yet felt there wasn’t a safe place to walk,” explained Kammermann. As an incentive to keep using the .2-mile track, the first 100 walkers to complete 100 miles will receive T-shirts identifying them as members of the 100-Mile Club.

When third-year medical students serve a four-week rural clerkship at the Martin Center, involvement with the Right Weigh to Health fulfills a community project requirement. “This gives them the opportunity to focus on a long term project that could have a long-term impact on the community,” said Kammermann.

Medical student Jim Richter worked on arrangements for the path’s grand opening celebration. Over the course of the 18 months it took to plan and implement the walking path, Richter and other medical students gained an appreciation of the interrelationships with Fairfield County Hospital, Clemson Extension Master Gardeners, the Fairfield County Recreation Commission, the Fairfield County Soil and Water Conservation District and various local businesses and organizations. “We tried to convey to the students that by getting others involved, the walking path would be seen as a community project and not a Martin Center or medical student project. We have more buy-in now than if we had done it all ourselves,” Kammermann said. Richter observed, “This project brought people in the community together to create a safe, well-lit place where they can get out and walk,” he said.

Structured weight loss classes are another means of addressing obesity, and the Right Weigh to Health promotes classes that are offered in Fairfield County. With so many children who are struggling with excess weight, the staff helped write a grant to fund a pediatric weight loss program. To combat sedentary lifestyles, an investment was made in a supply of step counters, which are offered to patients at a discount price. Patients are instructed about the 10,000 steps per day fitness program developed by an exercise physiologist as a daily target for their activity and exercise level. “It’s another motivating tool for people,” Kammermann said. “We find out their baseline amount of steps per day, then work with them to slowly increase that number, whether it’s taking a walk, going to the gym or making changes to their daily routine,” she said.

Adopting healthy changes is a process, one that Richter learned more about during the medical student’s month in Winnsboro. He anticipates the process will be a significant one when he begins practicing Internal Medicine. “The hard part is getting people to choose skim milk instead of coke and vegetables instead of French fries. It’s a long road, not just in Winnsboro but everywhere.” Yet Richter appreciates the efforts underway through the Right Weigh to Health. “The doctors at the center see health problems every day caused by obesity. This is one way of intervening and making steps out there in the community,” he said.

Reprinted from Connections newsletter, May 2005

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