Contact:
Elizabeth Blevins, Director, Office of Communications
Office: (740) 351-3810; FAX: (740) 351-3179; Cell: (740) 464-4854
940 Second Street – Portsmouth, Ohio 45662
E-mail: eblevins@shawnee.edu 
Web site: www.shawnee.edu

             The Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation has awarded the Shawnee State University Development Foundation $26,900 to help fund a program called “Bringing Health to You! Reducing Heart Disease and Diabetes in Rural Appalachia.”
             The Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation receives hundreds of applications from 14 states each year for the grants offered.
             “The funds will be used to further meet the mission of the Mobile Health Unit effort bringing health education and screening to places in our area where people congregate,” said Mattie Burton, associate dean of Health Science and associate professor and chair of Nursing at SSU. “It will also help faculty provide clinical training to nursing students.”
             The purpose of the grant is to provide preventive action services, tests, screenings and education for health improvement to adult participants with unknown diabetes and cardiovascular disease, individuals who have the disease, and individuals with modifiable risk factors for developing the disease.
             “Heart disease and diabetes are endemic conditions that threaten the health and welfare of many or our neighbors and these funds will help us have an impact on the effects of chronic disease in our area,” Burton said.
             According to a study in 2001 by the Ohio Department of Health, 23 percent of Southwest Ohio residents are obese.
             Within the one-year grant period, it is hoped that 1,470 people throughout Appalachian Ohio and Kentucky will move from clinically overweight to clinically healthy.