Health versus Wellness

Dianne Gilbert was our guest speaker this week. She is an RN who has also been a licensed Massage Therapist since 2007. She has seen the workings of the health care industry working last in Memorial Hermann Southwest and has noted the use of the Emergency Rooms for non-life theatening primary care needs by those uninsursured or insured but uninformed.

Modern medicine or allopathic medicine is now facing the need for a total paradigm shift in its thinking – as deep a shift as the one that occurred when bacteria were first shown to be the agents of infectious diseases, and not 'bad air'. Years of treating sickness and symptoms rather than promoting wellness and finding causes have led to an urgent need for all of us to take greater responsibility for our health. We need to move from a 'sickness/curative' view to a 'wellness/preventative' view of what we do.

At the same time, business must help educate employees that a wellness approach to self-care is far preferable to an approach that is reactive to health issues. Prevention through healthy living and regular check-ups is a great deal less expensive than dealing with illness only when it has become so serious that emergency medical attetion is required.

The addition of outlying medical clinics, often with evening and weekend hours now can make access to wellness services easier for the general population - if they can be trained to properly use the new facilities.

Guests, Visitors & Other Good Things

Evelyn Hoyer introduced us to her friend George Mosee. George is a native of Nigeria, and recounted that his personal interest in fighting polio there had made him interested in Rotary after Evelyn told hime about the Polio Plus Program that is partially sponsored and funded by Rotary. Welcome George! Do come again to learn even more about Rotary.

Karen Blakeman continued her campaign to lei every member of the club in recognition of their contributions to the Rotary Foundation. This week she recognized Wayne Staton and Archie Wilcox. If you have not yet made your Rotary Foundation contribution for this year, please see Archie at the meeting on April 21st, we need to get your District raffle tickets turned in prior to the District Conference that starts April 30th.

Coming Up At Rotary