Hispanic community invited to ‘Dance Your Heart Out’

Dance Your Heart Out, an exciting annual event for the community, combines the efforts of many Christiana Care volunteers who provide health screenings and health education to raise awareness about heart health, cancer, stroke, nutrition and diabetes.

Following another successful Dance Your Heart Out event in March, Christiana Care held another event in April that was designed specifically for the Hispanic community. About 80 people attended the event sponsored by Christiana Care’s Community Center of Excellence in Women’s Health (CCOE) and organized by Christiana Care’s Center for Community Health in partnership with Language Services and the Helen F. Graham Cancer Outreach Program Promotoras.

Interpreters from Language Services were on hand to assist with diabetes risk screenings, BMI screenings and blood pressure screenings to ensure participants understood their results in their own language.

“Misunderstanding health information because it is not presented in an individual’s preferred language is a barrier to taking care of their health,” said Karen Anthony, MS, CHES, senior program manager, Family & Community Medicine. “Everyone should have the opportunity to receive health education in a way they could understand so that they can act on it. Hopefully we provided that at this event.”

With direction from Myriam Malaga on proper warm-up and stretching techniques, participants found that dance can provide not just a lot of fun, but a vigorous workout as well.

“Zumba was by far the most popular dance group,” said Program Manager Carla Aponte, MS, but the workouts also incorporated Latin dances such as salsa, bachata and merengue.