A medical center with a new gym in Roxbury is changing the way doctors approach healthcare. Patients at Whittier Street Health Center get prescriptions for medicine — and exercise. The health center director believes adding exercise to a daily regimen will change lives.
Bob Edwards and his son Joseph use the free weights inside their new gym. They sport t-shirts and sweats and spend over an hour a day working out. It feels like a private club but it’s their doctors office.
Bob has been a Whittier street patient for several years and now sees exercise just as important as any prescription. He says its good for health and long life and it's like meditation.
On the ground floor - dozens of treadmills, bikes and weights fill an open room with grey walls plastered with flat screen TVs. Off to the side there’s a huge room for yoga and pilates. Bob says for ten dollars, the price is right..
And THAT is music to the ears of Fredrica Williams. Williams is the CEO of Whittier Health Center — which opened this new location in Roxbury in 2012 — a neighborhood where the average life span is about 59 years. Williams notes that 70-percent of the people who come here for medical care have chronic health problem. She says obesity is a major problem along with high blood pressure and diabetes.
Williams says exercise is the best way to battle those diseases..but there’s another reason this is so needed. She says she found that people in Roxbury didn’t have safe place to work out.
Williams says exercise is the best way to battle those diseases..but there's another reason this is so needed. She says she found that people in Roxbury didn't have safe place to work out.
As part of that approach to wellness, doctors now prescribe daily exercise just as they would prescribe medicine.
Belinda Smith is a Whittier patient who does dialysis three days a week at a different hospital. Now she’s working out 3 days a week too. The last time she got on a treadmill was in the 90s, now she’s walking about 20 minutes a day in intervals of 2 minutes.
Belinda says doctors have been telling her to work out for years…but until now she couldn’t afford it…. the $10 a month fee Whittier charges works for her.
The gym has been open for 2 weeks and so far 300 people have joined…its a jump start to better health that doesn’t break the pocketbook.
Bob Edwards hopes the motivations spreads to his neighbors.
