Looking out for the community
For the last two years, Di Fillhart has used Starfish Café as a venue for listening to the community and in turn, offering relevant, resident-driven health events and programs that target needs of Hancock County residents.
Residents are provided highly interactive health education programs and events empowering them to deepen and broaden their knowledge, practice and capacity for integrating healthy living strategies into their daily lives with the goal of promoting health and reducing bio-psycho-social health risks.
Some of the goals include:
HEALTHY COOKING CLASSES
The Healthy Cooking Classes Program is offered at Starfish Café with a focus on economically reasonable food selections and food preparation for optimal dietary management of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and gluten intolerance.
At the end of each session, participants are able to select foods and prepare meals that are congruent with the clinical guidelines for the dietary management of their chronic disease process.
ANNUAL DOING HEALTH FAIR
The Annual Doing Health Fair will be offered in partnership with Starfish Café and Hancock-Oschner Medical Center in Bay St. Louis, MS, and will focus on actively engaging county residents in health screenings for the early identification of health problems.
HEALTH CONVERSATIONS PROGRAM
Health Conversations’ is a series of interactive health discussions on diverse health topics that are of interest to residents of Hancock County and are congruent with ‘Leading Health Indicators’ identified in HealthyPeople 2020. ‘Health Conversations’ will be offered at Starfish Café, and ideas for offerings mentioned by some residents include heart health, dementia, complementary and alternative health strategies, smoking cessation, diabetes and stress and coping issues.
SHOPPING SMART AND HEALTHY PROGRAM
The Shopping Smart and Healthy Program will empower interested residents of Hancock County to go grocery shopping with one of the chefs at Starfish Café and learn how to read food labels to avoid fats, sodium, additives and preservatives and select reasonably priced fruits, vegetables, fish and meat in order to promote heart health and reduce the risk of diabetes.