Winter 2020-2021 Individual and Families Newsletter

In this issue

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The Need for Blood and Platelets is Constant

What COVID-19 is Doing to the Heart, Even After Recovery

Handwashing: A Family Activity

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the newest issue of Health Matters. We hope you’re staying warm and healthy this winter,

In this issue, we offer tips for sticking to your 2021 resolutions, how COVID-19 affects heart health, and information about the need for blood and plasma donations.

Two quick reminders: Don’t forget to get your flu shot and Open Enrollment ends Dec. 15.

As always, if you ever have any questions, please feel free to contact Member Services at 844.282.3025.

Nothing means more to us than knowing we’ve helped make our members’ lives better. We wish you and yours a happy and safe holiday season ahead.

In good health,

Nancy Horstmann
Chief Executive Officer
CHRISTUS Health Plan

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Our Outreach Coordinator is sending out health reminder letters and doing outreach calls, to help you complete important wellness visits, blood sugar tests, and breast imaging exams. These medical tests and exams are valuable in preventing harm through early detection. We look forward to teaming up with you in reaching a better level of health. For more information about our Outreach Coordinator, call Member Services at 800.678.7347.

Handwashing: A Family Activity

Handwashing is an easy, cheap, and effective way to prevent the spread of germs and keep kids and adults healthy.

Parents and caretakers play an important role in teaching children to wash their hands. Handwashing can become a lifelong healthy habit if you start teaching it at an early age. Teach kids the five easy steps for handwashing— wet, lather, scrub, rinse and dry—and the key times to wash hands, such as after using the bathroom or before eating. You can find ways to make it fun, like making up your own handwashing song or turning it into a game.

Building handwashing skills takes time. At first, your child will need regular reminders of how and when to wash hands. It is especially important to remind children to wash their hands after using the bathroom, before eating, after touching pets, after playing outside, and after coughing, sneezing, or blowing their nose.

Young children learn by imitating the behaviors of adults in their lives. When you make handwashing part of your routine, you’re setting an example for your children to follow.

If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that has at least 60% alcohol, and wash your hands with soap and water as soon as you can.

Baby wipes may make your hands look clean,but they’re not designed to remove germs from your hands. CDC recommends washing hands with soap and water when possible. Remember to make handwashing a healthy habit at home, school, and at play! Source: cdc.gov/handwashing/handwashing

What COVID-19 is Doing to the Heart, Even After Recovery

A growing number of studies suggest many COVID-19 survivors experience some type of heart damage, even if they didn’t have underlying heart disease and weren’ tsick enough to be hospitalized. This latest twist has health care experts worried about a  potential increase in heart failure.

These complications, such as myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, could lead to an increase in heart failure down the road. There is also concern about people with pre-existing heart disease who don’t have COVID-19 but who avoid coming into the hospital with heart problems out of fear of being exposed to the virus.

Nearly one-fourth of those hospitalized with COVID-19 have been diagnosed with cardiovascular complications, which have been shown to contribute to roughly 40%
of all COVID-19-related deaths.

“There’s a group of people who seem to be more affected from the cardiac point of view,” said Dr. Mina Chung, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. But, she said, it can be difficult to identify who is at risk, or for those recovering from the virus to know if they’re having heart problems.

“A lot of people end up feeling exhausted for a while. They can’t get up to the exertion level they were at before. But it’s difficult to tease out whether or not it’s the lungstaking a little more time to heal or whether it’s a cardiac issue,” said Chung, who is leading the coordination of more than a dozen ongoing COVID-19 research studies funded by the American Heart Association.

Doctors advise those recovering from COVID-19 to watch for the following symptoms– and to consult their physician or a cardiologist if they experience them: increasing or extreme shortness of breath with exertion, chest pain, swelling of the ankles, heart palpitations or an irregular heartbeat, not being able to lie flat without shortness of breath, waking up at night short of breath, lightheadedness or dizzy spells.

Source: heart.org/en/news/2020/09/03/what-covid-19-is-doing-to-the-heart-even-after-recovery

The Need for Blood and Platelets is Constant

The American Red Cross has a constant and ongoing need for blood and platelet donations. There is no known end date in this fight against coronavirus, and the Red Cross needs the help of blood and platelet donors and blood drive hosts to meet the needs of patient care.

The American Red Cross is testing all blood, platelet and plasma donations for COVID-19 antibodies. As part of that effort, plasma from whole blood donations that test positive for COVID-19 antibodies may now help current coronavirus patients in need of convalescent plasma transfusions.

Donating blood products is essential to community health and the need for blood products is constant. The Red Cross follows the highest standards of safety and infection control, and volunteer donors are the only source of blood for those in need.

As hospitals resume surgical procedures and patient treatments that were temporarily paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, donors are urged to give now to ensure blood products are readily available for patients. source: redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/dlp/coronavirus--covid-19--and-blood-donation.html

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