A number of high-profile local and international church and government officials joined the Seventh-day Adventist Conference in its observance of Health Week (18 to 24 September), in which the organisation sought to motivate students, members, pastors and other leaders to maintain and promote optimal health practices.

Health Week activities included a healing service, the launch of a regional health programme at the Adventist high school, a seminar with health leaders from the various churches, a service instructing Adventists in the Cayman Islands on how they can achieve a “healthy church,” and a meeting with church pastors on the importance of their leadership responsibilities in the area of health.

Here in the Cayman Islands to lead the week’s observance was the Inter-American Division’s Health Ministries Director, Mrs. Lidia Belkis Archbold. Also lending her presence to the occasion was Cayman’s Minister of Education the Hon. Tara Rivers, who addressed students at Cayman Academy on Friday (23 September).

Also attending were Ms Nancy Barnard, Deputy Chief Officer for the Ministry of Health, who represented the Premier and the Chief Officer for the Ministry of Health who were unavoidably absent; Ms Janett Flynn, Senior Policy Adviser, Ministry of Health; and Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Samuel Williams-Rodriguez, who spoke at the meeting, and who sponsored the I Want to Live Healthy brochures distributed to students.

Accompanying the guests of honour at each activity was Cayman Islands Conference Health Director Gay Smith and Health Director for the Atlantic Caribbean Union Ms Annie K. Price. The Atlantic Caribbean Union governs regional territories, including the Cayman Islands Conference, while the ambit of the overarching Inter-American Division’s (IAD) administration extends to Latin America.

In her address to students, Hon. Rivers said: “I applaud the Health Ministries Department [of the Cayman Islands Conference] for offering members of our community some simple yet proven methods to effectively and positively change our lifestyles.” The minister added that the project launched at Cayman Academy added fun, practicality and competition to the aim of acquiring healthy habits.

Minister Rivers thanked the Conference for partnering with the Government in its “fight against the tendency towards indifference as it relates to [personal] health.” She said that both the Ministry of Education and the Department of Education Services were working to offer healthier food options for students.

Special guest Belkis Archbold told Cayman Academy students that the I Want to Live Healthy programme currently in place in local churches started in the Northern parts of Mexico and was now being practised in 36 countries. She said that governments in those countries were partnering to introduce the progamme at national levels.

The I Want to Live Healthy programme is designed to encourage participants to adopt eight healthy habits, at the rate of one each week. The eight habits are drinking water, particularly in place of sodas and sugary drinks, adopting a positive attitude, eating salads, exercising, getting adequate rest (8 to 9 hours each night), regular “fasting,” that is, a phased elimination of processed foods, eating a healthy and balanced breakfast and a light dinner, and, finally, adopting a happy and cheerful attitude.

In summing up at the launch, Ms Price said that adopting healthy lifestyle habits will create a generation of healthy adults, thereby reducing the incidence of non-communicable diseases with endless benefits to families, communities and government.

Later in the week, Mrs. Belkis Archbold similarly encouraged Adventist church members in the pursuit of health lifestyles. She underscored, however, that while that was important, it was even more essential to “practise what they preached.”

As such, she asserted, the church needed dietary reform to move members towards more consistent application of health principles in daily living.

Meeting separately with pastors, Mrs. Belkis Archbold highlighted the increasing number of deaths in the churches and in the wider community from non-communicable diseases. Pastors were encouraged to raise awareness through educating members, identifying the needs of the community, and engaging in preventive community outreach activities.

Other activities of the IAD Health Director included a visit to Health City, with which the IAD health administration recently signed an agreement beneficial to six of its medical institutions. That agreement included the provision of cardiac interventions for children who would not otherwise have access to the level care being provided at Health City.

Mrs. Belkis Archbold said she was touched by the Have a Heart Foundation’s role in providing life-saving medical care for children,12 of whom she lunched with during her Health City visit. She promised to link children in need of cardiac surgery across the IAD’s purview to the foundation’s coordinator in Cayman.

Commenting at the end of her visit on her vision for Cayman, Mrs. Belkis Archbold said that just as cities across America were being challenged to become “blue zones,” her dream was for Cayman to be recognized as one. Worldwide the five recognized longevity hotspots known as blue zones are Okinawa (Japan); Sardinia (Italy); Nicoya (Costa Rica); Icaria (Greece); and Loma Linda, California. The Health Director said the World Health Organisation (WHO) had selected Loma Linda, an Adventist enclave, for special research studies and cooperative exchanges.