Hey everyone!

Our 22 team was fighting hard to be in a position to win at Phoenix but you can’t control Mother Nature. With one race left in Miami, I can say it’s been a season I am proud of. Our focus is on winning this last race and looking forward to 2016!

This Week’s Cause: Diabetes Awareness

This will be my final blog post for our Chasing Second Chances program. I’ve really enjoyed spending some time writing and reflecting on the causes we featured. Hopefully you have enjoyed reading a few of my thoughts and learned about some wonderful charities doing some great work.

For the first two weeks of the month, we let you know about some great organizations helping in the fight against cancer. For our final cause, we are going to switch over to diabetes awareness.

We decided to choose this cause because it has become a serious problem for millions of Americans, including children. We all hear the reports- kids are spending too much time in front of screens and not being physically active. Diets are full of calories and sugary drinks and in turn causing high rates of obesity across the country. I wanted to learn more so I went to the American Diabetes Association page to look for some information.

Here are a few of the recent statistics I found:

  • Nearly 30 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes.
  • Another 86 million Americans have prediabetes and are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes.
  • The American Diabetes Association estimates that the total national cost of diagnosed diabetes in the United States is $245 billion.

When you see numbers like this effecting the population, it is not something that can be ignored. This got me thinking a lot about prevention, especially because type 2, the most common form of diabetes, is preventable! Prevention is what led us to this week’s charity partner.

This Week’s Joey Logano Foundation Chasing Second Chances Partner

Our tenth Chasing Second Chances partner is the Children’s Health Fund.

Children’s Health Fund is committed to providing health care to the children who need it most. They have innovative programs that reach out to children in their neighborhoods and at school, helping to ensure that they’re healthy and ready to succeed. Through a national network of 51 mobile medical clinics, they are able to serve 80,000 children each year.

Our Chasing Second Chances grant is going to support CHF’s South Florida Children’s Health Project. Dr. Lisa Gwynn and her team, including two advanced nurse practitioners, psychologist, counselor/social worker and driver, make their rounds to elementary schools, faith-based facilities and community centers to provided needed medical treatment to children.

I really like this project we are funding. This group has devised a unique obesity-intervention program that uses technology to connect low-income kids to sub-specialists located miles away. These kids have a body mass index at or above the 85th percentile. They are at risk of diabetes and other health problems.

These kids participate in “virtual visits,” where they receive behavioral counseling from a pediatric psychologist; nutrition and exercise counseling from a registered dietician; and/or medical care from an endocrinologist. To reinforce behavior change between medical visits (both in-person and telehealth), kids receive health education messaging via apps. The goal is to motivate kids and their families to make difficult behavior changes and support them through the difficult task of following through with their good intentions. By changing bad habits, the focus is on prevention of health issues like diabetes.

We are proud to support another outstanding organization working to positively address the needs of their community.

Thank you for taking the time to keep up with our Chasing Second Chances platform and the work the Joey Logano Foundation is doing to provide second chances to those in need.