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Sea foam: Hilton Head resident awarded a Freddie for his work on movie about obesity
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Thanks to Howard Rankin, a Hilton Head Island clinical psychologist and the author of seven books on health-related issues, for sharing the story of his recent trip to "Hollywood ... er, sort of."
Howard writes:
Commitment, passion and teamwork. Those were the qualities that helped us win the prestigious international Freddie award for the movie "The Million Calorie March." So here I was, at the Ritz Carlton in Philadelphia, with my friends and colleagues, producer Todd Patkin and Gary Marino, whose 1,200-mile walk from Florida to Boston to raise awareness about obesity was the movie's subject.
The Freddies are the medical Oscars, awards given to the best visual media in health communications in 32 different categories. This year's winners represented an array of formats, from short public service announcements to Gary's 98-minute movie. They were made by a variety of production teams, from independents like ours to cable giants such as CNN and Discovery Health.
The festivities began a day before the mid-November awards ceremony and we spent lots of time schmoozing with network executives, and networking with schmoozing executives.
An international awards event is a good place to showcase your product, and we found interest and enthusiasm for the movie, which tells in an entertaining yet poignant way, one man's struggle with morbid obesity.
At one point, Gary weighed "a Super Bowl party away from 400 pounds," but rose to the challenge to become a spokesperson on the issue and create a walk that was covered on national media and reached 70 million people.
One judge, an endocrinologist from Ohio, told us that our entry was "the runaway winner" in the diet and nutrition category. That was an appropriate expression for this movie about a walking campaign because after losing 150 pounds, Gary did indeed run the Boston Marathon.
The awards ceremony itself was memorable. Past winners, such as Bill Gates, Peter Jennings, Dr. C. Everett Koop and Magic Johnson, were seen in the awards kickoff video. Former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan hosted the show, and Bono congratulated all the winners via a video feed. Compassion and concern were evident even from the short clips and necessarily brief acceptance speeches.
It was all over in a flash -- lots of flashes actually. The awards ceremony also was video recorded and is to be broadcast at a later date on a health network.
And then it was back to work. Awards events like this are nice but they are the icing on the cake, a temporary indulgence that cannot deflect us from the important work of tackling this nation's massive health crisis.
Gary and I have been working tirelessly to bring awareness and preventive methods to the forefront of public attention through innovative campaigns.
After Gary's Million Calorie March he orchestrated the Million Pound Meltdown in Pennsylvania (which documented 52,000 pounds lost) and we recently collaborated on Blue Cross of North Carolina's Million Step March in which he walked across the Tar Heel state.
Currently we're in discussion with sponsors in three different states about similar wellness campaigns. We also do worksite wellness programs, often as "the Shrink and the Shrunk," and have an innovative TV pilot show in the works.
Our belief is that information alone doesn't change people. They need inspiration, motivation, tools and support to recognize their lifestyle issues and retrain old patterns -- not an easy task when many of us live stressful lives and reside in a fat culture.
Our goal is to tackle the health care crisis by fostering change one person at a time.
And make no mistake, there is a massive crisis. In a generation or so, more than half of this country will be obese -- currently it's about 30 percent -- and tens of millions more will be morbidly obese.
Today there are about 24 million people with diabetes in this country, and a quarter of them do not yet know it. The cost of treating the exploding diabetes epidemic alone will almost rival the cost of the current financial crisis bailout, which itself will be dwarfed by the overall costs for all obesity-related conditions.
For us, the issue isn't just about how the country will be able to afford the massive costs of medication, surgery and care, it's about helping people change so that those remedies won't be necessary in the first place.
Following a Packet column about Gary in the summer, the Health Ministry of First Presbyterian Church, which was planning a health program for early 2009, contacted me. The upshot is an extensive community health initiative called "Inspiring Wellness" organized by the Health Ministry and presented by myself with help from some of my health care colleagues.
The program will consist of eight seminars on successive weeks that aim to provide the motivation, tools and support to facilitate real health changes. The program is nondenominational, non-biblical, and free to the public. The program will kick off Jan. 14 with the local premiere of "The Million Calorie March" and Gary will be here -- and return periodically from Boston -- to inspire and entertain you. You'll love him.
All of us need to be mindful of how we can continually be improving our health. I'll tell you now that you can do better than you think you can and it will make a huge difference to you, your loved ones and the community. We're all interdependent so that even if you're the picture of health and fitness you need to be involved as a role model to inspire and motivate others.
It's both appropriate and awesome that this nonprofit community effort, which focuses on positive change, interdependence and support, has been supported by local churches of all faiths. Whether we can significantly improve the health of our community and create a healthier culture will be determined by whether, together as a community, we can generate enough commitment, passion and teamwork.
The Island Packet appreciates all written and photographic submissions from readers. All submissions become the copyrighted property of The Island Packet, which may use them for any purpose, including in print and online, without compensation to the submitter.
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