Sports For Healthy Kids joined efforts with Doral-based OrthoNOW to raise awareness about the importance of sports and nutrition in enhancing kids’ confidence, building discipline, and helping decrease the incidence of obesity and other preventable diseases.
The special event took place Aug. 10 involving businesses and community-based organizations during the annual KIDZ Wellness Fair sponsored by OrthoNOW in Doral.
“We want to empower the kids and youth of our community to consider sports, physical activity and proper nutrition lifelong habits,” said Dr. Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes, President and Founder of Sports For Healthy Kids.
“We pair kids with a professional individual sport coach according to their learning and motivational style and provide nutritional counseling for them and the parents,” she noted. “It is all highly individualized.”
“The alliance leverages resources from two organizations dedicated to getting kids moving,” said Dr. Alejandro Badia, Chief Medical Officer of OrthoNOW, an orthopedic urgent care center collaborating with Sports For Healthy Kids as a natural way of enhancing OrthoNOW’s ongoing efforts to keep kids active and helping them get back to their game when the inevitable sports injuries or training issues become apparent. Dr. Badia who is also President of the International Society for Sport Traumatology of the Hand, added that “regardless of injury or current level of activity, we are fostering partnerships with the business and the non profit community to optimize the health of our kids and empower them to grow healthy and confident.”
The KIDZ Wellness Fair brought together vendors and organizations in varied fields including tennis academies, healthcare providers, and high-tech imaging equipment companies. Edison Sabala, MPH, MBA, and Chief Executive Officer of Sports For Healthy Kids, commented he was glad to see businesses interested in the well being of kids in the community. He emphasized that although most of his organization’s services were free for participating kids and youth ages 4-18, he did not view his work as charity.
“Our mission is a calculated investment in the future of our community- we envision that using sports as a platform for empowering kids to grow up healthy and confident will reduce the cost of preventable diseases and enable kids to become productive, selfreliant members of their community.”
