Success Story: Tarea and Adult Day Training

Alliance for Independence is an Adult Day Training Center that provides independent living skills and vocational training to Polk County adults with developmental disabilities. As a United Way of Central Florida partner, AFI has instituted healthy living training for its clients enrolled in the Day Training program to great success. Here’s just one example of the way they are working with us to create measureable, lasting change in the health of members of our community:

Tarea is 40 years old, and a dependable, hard worker. She advocates for herself very well, and loves to earn money. Unfortunately, Tarea also loves food and finds exercise a chore. A lack of transportation combined with a need for supervision prevents her from travelling by herself.  Because of this, when she was unable to get to AFI, she would just sit and watch TV.

In early 2011, Tarea was diagnosed as a borderline diabetic with higher than normal blood pressure. She had long had a problem with her weight, but until her diagnosis, she had been uninteresting in learning about how to improve her health. With the help of her Skills Trainer at AFI, Tarea added a goal to her individualized training program to better understand her diabetes. As a part of that goal, she became active in the Healthy Living Initiative, a program supported and evaluated by United Way of Central Florida. Through the program, she has learned about controlling her diabetes, making healthy food choices, and she has engaged in the AFI Walking Club for exercise.

"I feel great," she says. "Me and my family do it, too."

All of her hard work has paid off! Tarea’s diabetes is under control, her blood pressure has dropped into the normal range, and she has lost eight pounds. She has become much more active, both at home and at AFI, and she has learned how to make healthy eating choices, something she proudly shares with AFI staff every day.

Making lasting, measurable improvements is the goal of United Way of Central Florida’s focus on the health of our community. When individuals, like Tarea, learn to make better choices for themselves that reduce blood pressure and control chronic conditions such as diabetes, it reduces their chances of hospitalization, or emergency room visits, and increases their ability to be productive employees.