SAN JOSE, CA: The South Asian Heart Center’s (SAHC) third annual fundraiser, Scarlet Night 2011, was held on March 12, at the San Jose Convention Center and attended by over 750 guests. The popular event this year focused on increasing community awareness and prevention of heart disease among South Asians who are at four times higher risk of heart disease than any other population.
The Gala’s targets were to raise funds through the casino, raffles, the silent auction and event ticket sales. The event raised over $200,000. Sheetal Singhal, Rita Sharma, and Sujatha Suresh garnered the Fundraising Hero Awards and Anita Sathe and Girish Shah earned the five year Meritorious Service Awards.
“We don’t practice medicine, we help individuals develop very good lifestyle habits not only for themselves, but for their families to prevent heart disease,” Dr. Cesar Molina, Medical Director of the SAHC, told India Post.
“One of our missions is to bring awareness of the condition and to educate individuals to decrease heart problems and diabetes. Now, we are moving into the realm of research. We are writing peer review papers and hopefully our work is not limited to the Bay Area, now it’s available to scientists, medical practitioners around the world. This is not only a local epidemic; it’s actually a global epidemic,” he added.
One of the ways to improve heart health is to eat better and cook healthier meals at home. “Women are the ones who can prevent diabetes at home. Women are the ones who can change the diet. Women can get the healthy physical activity going. Many women dance. Get your entire family to dance,” said, Ashish Mathur, Executive Director of the SAHC.
“Shasta Foods, one of the event sponsors, has worked to create alternative heart healthy batters for idli and dosa that is generally very high in carbohydrate content,” he added.
“I think the SAHC is fantastic and I’m learning more about more myself although the Center,” Councilmember Ash Kalra told India Post.
“The center has helped me by showing what I should eat, what kind of exercises I should be doing, how I should manage my stress, and being a mother of four, life can sometimes be very stressful,” said Sheetal Singhal, gala Co-Chair.”
“Its an honor to be here today and I do support the multicultural aspect of health benefits and appreciate the work that South Asians are doing to identify the fact that they are four times greater risk of heart disease than the normal population so its good that they are trying to address that issue,” Assembly member Paul Fong told India Post.
“SB Films has worked with the SAHC collaboratively to make a film entitled, ‘Heart Has Reasons,’ because they are trying to raise awareness of the disease, what they can do to avoid it, and find creative solutions, said Mr. Mathur. He also talked about creative solutions such as putting almonds in the candy jar instead of M & M’s.
Congressman Mike Honda commended the SAHC group for their good work by saying, “I am here to support the fundraising effort of the South Asian community. Addressing the unique medical needs of the community is very important and health disparity is something we should be paying attention to.”
“The awareness level has gone quite high significantly. To me that is the real value,” noted Sanjay Mittal, Community Advisory Council and one of the early donors of the SAHC.
The evening included connecting with friends, heart healthy hors d’oeuvres and a delectable dinner, heart healthy laughter by Nitin Kant, and dancing to the tunes of DJ Salim. Prakash Vaswani was the Emcee for the evening.
SAHC’s offers a comprehensive, culturally appropriate program incorporating wellness education, advanced screening, lifestyle change, case management and over 3,300 people have been screened at the center so far. SAHC has inspired several Bay Area restaurants and businesses in the food service industry to offer heart healthy options.
Kavita Arora is Anchor &
Co-Producer of Sitaarre TV
Kavita Arora
India Post News Service
