It’s American Heart Month, Start Walking!

February is all about the heart.

We all know about Valentine’s Day. 

But you may not know that February is also American Heart Month.

It’s a time when we nationally recognize that heart disease is the number one cause of death for Americans — but more importantly, that we can help prevent the disease by eating right and getting more exercise.

This year, the timing of that message couldn’t be more perfect for all of us in San Diego County.

Why? Well, because we’ve been talking a lot lately about health and wellness.

In fact, we’ve made improving employee health and wellness one of our countywide resolutions for 2012.
In December, the Department of Human Resources (HR) and I unveiled the County’s new “Employee Wellness Program” and the new website dedicated to that program.

We talked about events, tools and activities — things you’ll be hearing a lot more about in the future — that will help us create a culture of health and wellness, such as quarterly fitness challenges, walking clubs, a spring health and wellness expo, health screenings, Weight Watchers at Work and “lunch and learns.”

Last week, HR rolled out the “10,000 Steps Challenge,” a 12-week walking program designed to get us all up and walking with a goal of 10,000 steps (roughly five miles) each day. We also released a new CTN.org video (Yup, that’s me walking!). And this morning we released our latest “Live Well Minute,” about heart health.

Some of our departments have already started rising to the challenge.

The County Communications Office announced that its members are “walking” to San Francisco, individually tracking their weekly numbers to make the 500-mile trek.

And HHSA’s Behavioral Health Services division announced that they were walking to New York, collectively pooling their miles to walk the 2,800-plus distance.

Of course, while February’s American Heart Month is concentrated on improving heart health, our aim is larger.

Our employee health and wellness program is really an extension of the ambitious regional health initiative we started in 2010, “Live Well, San Diego!”

That initiative aims to not only fight heart disease/stroke, but also cancer, type 2 diabetes and respiratory illnesses.

And walking is a great first step (so to speak) to winning that fight.

Folks, I know that changing habits can be hard, even intimidating.

Who has the time? Our days are full!

But I’m also here to say you can start small. You don’t have to walk to San Francisco or New York, or even 10,000 steps a day.

Take a walk around your building. If you’re here at the County Administration Center where I work, we’ve got eight floors of stairs you can walk without ever leaving the building. Personally, I try to walk to Horton Plaza every day I can.

The important thing is to start; to get on the road to better health and wellness.

I think it was Lao-Tzu, the great Chinese philosopher, who said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

So start walking!