|
DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS
Kitty Grunert, 71, ofMahwah, swims at the newValley
Health System facility located in Mahwah.
|
|||
“ IF WE CAN GET PEOPLE TO BE MORE PHYSICALLY ACTIVE, WE CAN SAVEHEALTH CARE DOLLARS LATER.” DR. J. CHRISTOPHER MENDLER
MEDICAL DIRECTOR AT HNH FITNESS
|
Kitty Grunert isn’ t who you would picture when you hear the term gym rat. But the 71-year-old Mahwah woman goes to Valley Health Lifestyles several times a week to swim and walk around the indoor track. Before joining the new fitness center that opened in Mahwah, she suffered from myriad spinal and hip ailments. Now, she says, her back feels better than it has in years.“ I’ ve got everything: aherniated disk, abulging disk, osteoarthritis,” Grunert says.“ I have no pain anymore. When Itell my doctor, he’ samazed.”
The fitness center is part of Valley Health System, which manages the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, and is the latest gym affiliated with a local hospital system to open in northern New Jersey. Hackensack University Medical Center opened afitness center in Maywood in 2012 and Holy Name Medical Center has run agym in Oradell since 2007. And Englewood Hospital and Medical Center recently launched apartnership
|
with Kaplen JCC on the Palisades to improve patients’ health before and after treatment through a fitness program at the center.
Beyond fitness
These centers aim to be more than just places to work out. Nutritionists are on staff to help clients design diets to complement their exercise program. In addition, patrons undergo a mammography, receive physical therapy, or visit specialty programs such as the diabetes center or behavioral health services at HackensackUMC Fitness & Wellness. Valley’ s center will offer a pharmacy, urgent care center, diagnostic screening, physical therapy and cardiac rehabilitation on-site.
Hospital officials say the centers are a way to improve people’ s health outside the doctor’ s office and expand their outreach into the communities they serve.“ We want to not just treat people who are sick, but live up to our mission of providing health to the community,” says Mark Sparta, executive vice president and chief operating officer at
|
TARIQ ZEHAWI |
28 2018 EDITION |( 201) HEALTH |