SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) — The Wright Center for Community Health is celebrating National Health Center Week with several activities this week, including Saturday morning’s Walk with a Doc program along the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail in Scranton.
The program is designed to get people in the community out walking and to engage with doctors from the Wright Center, helping bridge the gap between doctors and patients through the concept of lifestyle medicine.
The Wright Center brings doctors from its center to the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail to interact with patients and people in the community so that they can feel at ease when talking to their doctor and can ask medical questions while they walk along the miles-long trail.
“The whole idea of lifestyle medicine, one of the things is not only nutrition and physical activity, but also social engagement,” Dr. Walter Wanas, a Dietitian-Nutritionist at the Wright Center for Community Health, said, “So here it’s beautiful because we can walk the distance and get physical activity, we can socialize to get that socialization in there and they can look at getting a little bit of medical advice but you know, we keep the medical advice a little light.”
Wanas says that even just walking a short distance and being out in the fresh air makes a huge difference in partaking in the concept of lifestyle medicine.