About Us - Our Challenge

We share a challenge with many other organizations committed to helping people make positive choices, particularly for those individuals with or trying to prevent chronic health challenges. We see daily increases in incidents of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic health care challenges like diabetes and observe the impacts of the increasing stress of daily life. There are certainly specific genetic issues at the root of some of the incidents of these health challenges. There is also, however, increasing acknowledgement that positive individual choices to live a balanced life style are often the best way to prevent ALL of these health challenges and always seem to be part of the prescription for treatment, when necessary. There is also increasing acknowledgement that we are facing a health care crisis.

Against this backdrop, The Balance & Stretch® Center Inc. was organized exclusively for charitable and educational purposes. The Center has established a 3-part mission:

Our Mission

• To promote positive choices, particularly for  those with or trying to prevent chronic health challenges.
• To advocate balance as a key to a healthy and full life.
• To encourage people to stretch for themselves and for others to reach their full potential.

In support of our mission, we have developed a 3-part strategy to help people .

Our Strategy

1) The Center primarily supports non profit organizations that already do a great job supporting people and support our mission. These include Associations, Foundations, Hospitals, Clinics, Camps, Councils, Civic organizations, Private Community Centers as well as Federal, State and Local Public Health Organizations, domestically and internationally. In addition to their current education and care programs, we offer these organizations the following at no charge (see note 1 below):

A Simple Message – Balance & Stretch®

This trademark is offered as a motivational and educational theme in support of our mission and the mission of many other great organizations.

A Powerful Symbol

This trademark offers a symbol for health and life balance with its 2 (customizable) colors as well as both individual stretch with the “stretch marks” and a circle around the star to represent our focus on those “around us” who need our help. It is meant to offer a sense of pride and support to those who try to make good choices every day. The symbol also reinforces the high self esteem that people should feel as they work daily toward the goal of being a real “Star”. We offer further flexibility in the use of the trademark to enable organizations to uniquely connect to your members. The Barton Center for Diabetes Education, Inc. offers just such an example.

A Helpful Framework

This copyrighted design has two elements that will aid in education and retention. The blue “health star” provides an organizational structure for arranging the already rich content provided by many great organizations. The green “life star” provides a similar structure for arranging content in five areas for success in life. The intent is to provide non profit organizations with a tool to offer members to use to assist in health and life balance with the belief that they can be mutually reinforcing.

Additional Web Presence – www.balanceandstretch.org
Links for your members to your site and provide “commercials” about your success.

Consulting Support – The leaders of The Center are ready, willing and able to share ideas and “swap stories” to help people. Just ask.

Best Practice Sharing – Join with other World Class Organizations with similar missions. Our intent is support both formal and informal exchanges of best practices as we learn together how to help people succeed.

2.) The Center also supports individual “Stars” including those with and without health challenges who support our mission and believe it can help them. Although we accept donations of funds or time, connections and suggestions from individuals today, we hope to also offer individuals a Web support capability over time at no charge. We intend to develop this tool with the hope that it will be motivational and inspirational to support anyone who can use a little help.

3.) The Center will work with for profit, commercial organizations that provide products and services or will develop new products and services to support and fund our mission (see note 2 below).

An example of this partnership can be seen in the relationship between The Center and the MeadWestvaco Corporation’s AT-A-GLANCE® brand. Working together, the organizations developed a Day Planner intended to help children with diabetes. In the summer of 2006, a leading diabetes organization in Boston conducted a study at a camp for children wit diabetes to evaluate the tool’s and the curriculum’s ability to support improvement in knowledge, self -efficacy, quality of life, affect, and glycemic control. The Study found that the tools helped campers show improvements in self-efficacy and knowledge, reduced negative feelings about blood glucose monitoring and made a positive difference in diabetes control. The Study was highlighted at the ADA Scientific Session in Chicago in June 2007.

Note 1: The Balance & Stretch Center Inc. offers non profit organizations a no charge, perpetual license for the use of all trademarks and copyrighted material to help people. For a copy of the Letter of Understanding to enable this sharing, please contact Rick Miller at rick@balanceandstretch.org .

Note 2: The Balance & Stretch Center Inc. is interested in developing mutually beneficial business relationships with companies that support our mission. To discuss how our organizations might support each others needs, please contact Rick Miller at rick@balanceandstretch.org