GLENDALE : Healthy Cities Project Focus of Resolution

The city is taking the final steps toward a designation that will provide grant money for partnerships involving three area hospitals and churches, businesses, the city and the school district.

Council members will review a resolution today that supports the California Healthy Cities Project and allows Glendale to qualify for up to $5,000 in yearly funds from the California Healthy Cities program.

The move also allows the city to apply to the California Department of Health for a Healthy City designation.

Receiving such a designation is largely symbolic--it shows potential funding sources that the city is serious in its efforts to make Glendale a healthier community, said Bruce Nelson, director of community services at Glendale Adventist Medical Center.

Grant funds from the California Healthy Cities program will be used to support the “Healthy Kids” program--a pilot effort providing free health care to low-income schoolchildren at Cerritos, Edison, La Crescenta, Mann and Marshall schools starting this fall.

The effort is backed by the Glendale Unified School District, the Glendale Adventist Medical Center, Verdugo Hills Hospital and Glendale Memorial Hospital.

If the resolution is approved, the council will form a task force to assess health care needs throughout the city. Specific projects will then be designed, said Madalyn Blake, director of community development and housing.

Projects devised by 19 other California cities designated as healthy cities include efforts that focus on bicycle safety, smoking cessation, drunk driving, children’s vaccinations, and voter registration.

The area’s three hospitals formed the Glendale Healthy Community Coalition last year to assess the city’s health-care needs and will work with the council task force.

Hospitals nationwide are trying to redefine their mission from treating disease to focusing on disease prevention, said David Igler, vice president of Glendale Adventist Medical Center.

The hospitals plan to use the coalition to start a parish-nurse program in local churches. Parish nurses will be registered nurses or doctors who will provide health-care advice and education to parishioners.

Hospital administrators have also interviewed area businesses to encourage preventive health education and screening programs in companies, Nelson said.