Donor who helped Monroe schools take over, expand wellness center pledges more for improvements, upkeep, scholarships

The Monroe County Schools are getting a $1 million-plus donation for a family wellness center and scholarships for graduates of the county's only high school from businessman George Eagle Bushong of Bradenton, Fla., who grew up in a prominent Monroe County family.

George Bushong and daughter Isabelle

School Supt. Lewis Darrell Carter told Shelley Smith of the Glasgow Daily Times that Bushong had mentioned his intent to donate $50,000 a year for 10 years for the  Monroe County Family Wellness Center, and surprised him two weeks ago by adding an extra $55,000 for the next decade for various scholarships.

The schools took ownership in November 2011 of the center, "which was built on property owned by the school district," Smith reports. "Since then, Carter said the wellness center membership has gone up from 340 members to 1,200." The annual donations will pay for an indoor digital golf machine, a swimming scoreboard and maintenance of the George and Isabelle Bushong Foundation Aquatic Center, which Bushing helped build to hold swim meets and was named for his daughter.

Asst. Supt. Amy Thompson told Smith the wellness center is heavily used by student athletes for training, physical education classes and afterschool fitness classes. “It gives the kids something to do to include fitness in their lives,” she said. " Carter said he’s even seen families meet at the wellness center to work out together," Smith reports. "He said the funding to help support this facility will be great service to community. . . . To pay homage to Bushong’s generous donations, Carter said they will change the name of the wellness center to the George and Isabelle Bushong Foundation Monroe County Family Wellness Center."

Doctors' letter to the editor about the importance of physical activity is worthy of consideration from all Kentucky newspapers

Given its timeliness and message, Kentucky Health News encourages editors of Kentucky newspapers to consider publishing this compelling letter.

Physical activity — a daily staple

To the editor:

The 2012 London Olympics were a feast. Nobody with a hunger for sports, national rivalries or stories of individual struggles and accomplishment should have left the table unsatisfied. The Games served up a bounty of the very best.

After the feast, though, we need good, daily nutrition. Seeing the world's best athletes break records and vie for top honors, we can take their example and weave physical activity, exercise and sport into our daily lives. There's only one Usain Bolt, but millions of us run full-tilt through our careers and family life. The gymnastic magic of Gabby Douglas can inspire our headlong tumble through competing obligations and the flexibility to get it all done.

Translating Olympic activities into everyday life is more than a metaphor. With sedentary lifestyles linked to one in four deaths from non-communicable diseases, and with preventable conditions consuming unsustainable portions of health care costs, we must act individually and as a society to keep ourselves fit and healthy.

Food for thought

The facts are undeniable, and the evidence continues to mount. As the Games were poised to begin, no less an authority than The Lancet published a series of articles that underscore the extraordinary peril of physical inactivity for global health and national economies. Experts from Harvard, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and around the world made the case for urgent action: "In view of the prevalence, global reach, and health effect of physical inactivity, the issue should be appropriately described as pandemic, with far-reaching health, economic, environmental, and social consequences."

The reality is that the United States will not be able to grow it economy fast enough or large enough to pay for the treatment of rising levels of highly avoidable diseases and conditions, many of which are related to low levels of physical activity. This calls for collective action to encourage and enable all people to become and remain more active, whether through activities of daily living, exercise or sports.

On an individual level, we will each benefit from meeting at least minimum guidelines for physical activity. The payoff is improved health and quality of life for the individual, greater productivity in the workplace, and lower health costs for all of us. The alternative is unthinkable.

That's food for thought, indeed. As we push back from the table, still savoring a 17-day feast of athletics and achievement, let's make a menu of physical activity part of our daily lives. Anything less is too hard to swallow.

Janet Walberg Rankin, president, American College of Sports Medicine
Dr. Robert Sallis, chair, "Exercise is Medicine" Global Initiative

Effects of concussions outlast symptoms, UK prof finds; another study says they affect thinking of teenagers more than others

A University of Kentucky assistant professor has found that the effects of a concussion may last longer than the symptoms, a finding that could influence how and when athletes are allowed to get back into a game.

Scott Livingston (UK photo), director of the UK Concussion Assessment Research Lab, used an electrophysiological measurement to arrive at his conclusion. With 18 college athletes, he placed electrodes on a limb while a magnetic-stimulating device was put over their head. They then received a brief pulse of magnetic stimulation to their brain. The amount of time it took for the athlete's limb to receive the response from the brain after the stimulation was then recorded. Nine of tyhe athletes had gotten concussions in the past 24 hours and nine had not.

The athletes were evaluated for 10 days, based on self-reported symptoms such as memory loss, headache and confusion; a computerized neurocognitive test; and the electrophysiological measurement. While symptoms from the concussion were greater within 24 to 72 hours after the injury and lessened over time as measured by self-reporting and neurocognitive testing, electrophysiological measurements show physiological changes increased as symptoms decreased.

Further investigation is needed, "especially to assess how long the disturbances in physiological functioning continue after those initial 10 days post-injury," Livingston said. "But in the meantime, sports medicine personnel caring for concussed athletes should be cautious about relying solely on self-reported symptoms and neurocognitive test performances when making return-to-play decisions." (Read more)

Meanwhile, a study at the University of Montreal has found that "Concussions affect the thinking of teenagers more than they do that of adults or children," reports Nancy Shute of National Public Radio. "But all three age groups show lasting problems with working memory after sports concussions." (Read more)