American Heart Walk is back in its old rhythm
Sep. 24—There are few parts of daily life that have not been touched by the COVID pandemic. However, after two years of virtual-attendance-only meetings, the American Heart Association's Heart Walk took their old streets without missing a beat.
"We try to do Heart Walks in various communities throughout Kentucky and recognize and fight heart disease and stroke," said Jackie Dawson, Director of American Heart Association. "A heart walk is usually a one-mile or a three-mile option. Everyone's either doing one lap or they're doing three for the three-mile."
The walk began near the Judicial Center and spanned the streets of Downtown Somerset. The walk took place in the evening in order to time it with the end of the work day. Dawson found this time to be easiest to get families to downtown to exercise and spread awareness.
Dawson called the group Heart Walk around the city a "smaller event" and estimated an attendance of around 100 people, though she felt this was actually an impressive attendance.
"This is our first time back in person since the pandemic," said Dawson. "The last couple years have been virtual, so this is our first time back in person, so it was a little low in numbers compared to our in-person events, but I still think we had a great turnout."
As well as the participants in the event, many different local programs were also in attendance. Chest pain program coordinator at Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital Steve White who also helped sponsor the event organized a way for event goers to determine their risk of heard disease directly set up a booth to take people's blood pressure and give them useful information to survival of heart disease.
"We set up today to do blood pressure to give people information that they could use to calculate their cardiac risk score," said White. "We use all the information from the American Heart Association to enter their risk factors, calculate their risk score with them, and then behind that assess each risk score and let them know what to watch out for."
White said anything he could give that would help people be more aware of their heart information would be helpful. He also noted how invaluable EMS is and celebrated their partnership with the chest pain program as something that would really benefit Pulaski Countians.
For Dawson, events like this hold a personal significance to her.
"I lost my father to heart failure in 2020, but I was very fortunate, because he was diagnosed in 2006. and because of medicine that was discovered through the work of the American Heart Association, he lived 14 more years," said Dawson. "He was able to walk me down the aisle during at wedding, he was able to be there when both my kids were born. I miss him every day, but I do [the Heart Walk] for him and future survivors."
Dawson encouraged the people of Pulaski County to donate directly at heart.org/lakecumberlandwalk
"If you can, give the American Heart Association. We're always looking for more donations," said Dawson. "It's the number one killer of men. It's the number one killer of women. It's (more deadly than) all other cancers combined, and people don't always know that."
