WELLESLEY, Mass., Sept. 9, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Sun Life U.S.
is supporting five incredible community organizations around the
country for this year's Team Up Against Diabetes grant program.
Winners are chosen for their programs and initiatives supporting
diabetes prevention, management and education, as well as healthy
living and nutrition for local communities in need.
"We are so pleased to continue supporting many different
grassroots organizations around the country since starting this
program three years ago," said Dan
Fishbein, M.D., president of Sun Life U.S. "We have been
strongly committed to diabetes awareness and education for several
years, and these grant winners show the same commitment and
dedication to supporting the needs of diabetes patients and those
at risk. With more than 30 million Americans afflicted with Type 1
or 2 diabetes, these local organizations play a critical role in
diabetes awareness and treatment."
Recipients are recognized for their innovative approaches to
diabetes prevention and/or management, wellness, nutrition and
obesity prevention. Applications are reviewed annually by a panel
of Sun Life employees, business partners and independent health
experts.
2019 Team Up Against Diabetes grant program
winners:
Boston Children's Hospital, Optimal Wellness for Life
(OWL) program, Boston,
Mass.
Boston Children's Hospital's OWL
program is focused on addressing pediatric obesity. The grant
support will help expand OWL's exercise component to the Torigian
Family YMCA in Peabody, Mass.
Boston Children's hopes to engage about 200 children at this
facility in a program that expands the scope of care and reinforces
the importance of physical activity through fitness tracking and
diverse programming.
Mama's Kitchen, Home-Delivered Meals Service program,
San Diego, Calif.
Mama's Kitchen provides
home-delivered, medically tailored, nutritious meals free of
charge to local men, women and children vulnerable to hunger due to
HIV, cancer and other critical illnesses, including congestive
heart failure and Type 2 diabetes. With this grant support,
the program expects to serve 200 more homes, helping to improve
access to nutritious foods and diabetes self-management coaching,
reduce disease complications and lower healthcare costs while
improving overall health outcomes.
NOVA Scripts Central, Inc., ALL PHASE,
Falls Church, Va.
NOVA Scripts Central provides
prescription drugs to uninsured and underinsured patients in the
Northern Virginia community. Its ALL
PHASE program pairs an evidence-backed medication regimen with a
health literacy curriculum designed to reduce diabetic patients'
risk of heart attack or stroke. Sun Life's grant will enable NOVA
Scripts to continue to recruit patients to its ALL PHASE program
and help support a nutrition pilot program for 250 patients.
Western Maryland Health System, Food Security
Program, Cumberland,
Md.
Poor access to healthy, nutritious
foods puts adults at a 50% higher risk for developing diabetes.
Western Maryland Health System's food security program aims to
prevent this risk by assessing and streamlining a sustainable
approach to combating the problem. With this grant funding, the
program will be able to screen 2,400 at-risk individuals to assess
their need for cooking equipment, vouchers for healthy foods from
local pantries, healthy living workshops, and access to dieticians
and wellness programs. Additionally, the food security program will
focus on monthly community outreach events that include risk
assessments, cooking demonstrations and physical activities. In the
long term, the program will develop a process to identify health
gaps, recruit community partners, and integrate into county health
and human service networks.
WMHS has been at the forefront of
value-based care and is continually working to improve the overall
health of the community with a variety of health initiatives. WMHS
has also addressed underserved populations with the Hometown
Healthy outreach program, which aims to help at-risk
populations make more informed healthcare decisions.
Sansum Diabetes Research Institute, Farming For Life,
Santa Barbara, Calif.
Sansum Diabetes Research
Institute's Farming For Life was created to reduce the prevalence
of Type 2 diabetes in the local area and reverse the worsening
health crisis with "prescriptions" for free, fresh organic
vegetables, rather than expensive medications. A physician writes
patients a weekly vegetable prescription based on their health
measurements, and when participants fill their prescriptions, they
receive enough vegetables to feed their family for the week. Sun
Life's grant will help the center expand this program and serve
more people in need in the Santa
Barbara community.
The 2019 Team Up Against Diabetes grant program judging
panel:
- Jennifer Hudson, head of PR,
ComPsych Corporation
- Peter Kilmartin, Jr., partner,
Mercer Health & Benefits
- Cara Lamakina, wellness senior
consultant, Sun Life U.S.
- Glenna Lasater, vice president
of Human Resources, The MGIS Companies, Inc.
- Misty Randall, vice president,
Employee Benefits Marketing, HUB International
- Mark Vergilii, assistant vice
president, Group Market Manager, Sun Life U.S.
- Karen White, assistant vice
president, Health Care & Exchange Solutions, Sun Life U.S.
Sun Life has given over $19
million to the diabetes cause globally. In the U.S., Sun
Life partners with the Boston Celtics and the Kansas City Royals
for the #SunLifeDunk4Diabetes and #SunLifeStrikeoutDiabetes
campaigns, as well as with local youth programs that promote health
and fitness in Kansas City and
throughout New England. Sun Life U.S. also exclusively supports the
American Diabetes Association's Call to Congress advocacy
initiative, which lobbies for certain legislative priorities for
the diabetic community. For more information about Sun Life's
commitment to the diabetes cause, visit
www.sunlife.com/usdiabetes.
The application process for the 2020 Team Up Against Diabetes
grant program will open January 1.
Please visit www.sunlife.com/usgrants for more
information.
About Sun Life
Sun Life is a leading international
financial services organization providing insurance, wealth and
asset management solutions to individual and corporate Clients. Sun
Life has operations in a number of markets worldwide, including
Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong
Kong, the Philippines,
Japan, Indonesia, India, China,
Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Bermuda. As of June 30,
2019, Sun Life had total assets under management of
C$1,025 billion. For more
information, please visit www.sunlife.com.
Sun Life Financial Inc. trades on the Toronto (TSX), New
York (NYSE) and Philippine (PSE) stock exchanges under the
ticker symbol SLF.
In the United States, Sun Life
is one of the largest group benefits providers, serving more than
60,000 employers in small, medium and large workplaces across the
country. Sun Life's broad portfolio of insurance products and
services in the U.S. includes disability, absence management, life,
dental, vision, voluntary and medical stop-loss. Sun Life and its
affiliates in asset management businesses in the U.S. employ
approximately 5,500 people. Group insurance policies are issued by
Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada (Wellesley
Hills, Mass.), except in New
York, where policies are issued by Sun Life and Health
Insurance Company (U.S.) (Lansing,
Mich.). For more information, please visit
www.sunlife.com/us.
Media contact:
Devon Fernald
Sun Life U.S.
781-800-3609
Devon.Portney.Fernald@sunlife.com
Connect with Sun Life U.S.
https://www.facebook.com/SLFUnitedStates/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sun-life-financial/
https://twitter.com/SunLifeUS
View original content to download
multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sun-life-awards-250-000-in-grants-to-community-organizations-supporting-diabetes-programs-300914360.html
SOURCE Sun Life U.S.