Representatives from five local healthcare systems gathered at Jacksonville’s Museum of Science and History to bring a new exhibit to life.
The exhibit, Health in Motion: Discover What Moves You, presents data from a recent Community Health Needs Assessment, a study mandated by the Affordable Care Act to evaluate Jacksonville’s public health problems and their root causes.
“This is a first-of-its-kind exhibit, and is a result of … five healthcare systems and the MOSH team collaborating for nearly two years now, to create a new, interactive exhibit, that explores personal and community health,” said MOSH’s executive director Maria Hane.
Baptist Health, Brooks Rehabilitation, St. Vincent’s, University of Florida Health, and the Mayo Clinic worked together to
identify key community health needs, and consulted with MOSH to create the exhibit.
Russ Armistead, CEO of UF Health Jacksonville, said some of the big issues are cardiac arrest and stroke, two major killers. An active routine can help prevent both of these diseases, he said.
“People forget that it’s fairly easy to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but you have to think about it,” Armistead said. “This is a quick, easy way to say to people ‘Pay attention to what you eat, pay attention to your exercise, and just be smart about what you do.’ It’s really making the public aware.”
With the country’s aging population and soaring healthcare costs, a greater emphasis is being placed on preventive care as a potential solution.
“As we’re moving towards a new time in medicine where it’s not just about taking care of you when you’re sick, we get to take care of people when they’re well, and teach and educate about being healthy,” said emergency medicine physician Dr. Huson Gilberstadt, the chief clinical officer of St. Vincent’s.
Gilberstadt added that he hopes the exhibit will help improve the health of young visitors and their families. “They can take what they’ve learned back to their home, and help share that with their parents,” he said. “As we have more and more education for the kids, they’re going to learn this and eventually teach their kids.”
Slated to run for the next several years, Health in Motion will be updated as new information becomes available from future Community Health Needs Assessments, which will happen every three years.
“The exhibit is designed so that we can actually kind of watch how we’re moving the needle, and I mean ‘we’ as a community, are moving the needle on health,” said Hane, the museum's director.
Health in Motion will open to the public Tuesday with a grand opening celebration Saturday.