18 suggested health topics covered by ‘Project Hai’

Suggested program “Project Hai” to promote ritual baths as women’s health education centers.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Mikve 370 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Mikve 370
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
• Preventing home accidents such as burns from Shabbat and Hanukka candles, hotplates and samovars and how to avoid home fires, as well as preventing child choking on foreign objects and un-swallowable pieces of food,
• Preventing accidental poisonings from cleaning materials and medications and drowning in buckets during the pre-Pessah period
• Preventing falls (especially by putting bars on windows and balconies)
• Reducing road deaths and injuries on the way to school and back and elsewhere in the neighborhood and teaching women how to safely cross streets (especially with baby carriages)
• Encouraging first-aid and resuscitation education and teaching where and how to play safely in playgrounds, supervise older children who take care of their smaller siblings
• The importance of taking nutritional supplements such as vitamin D, calcium, iron and folic acid
• The need to go for a mammography after 50, or earlier if there is a family or genetic history of breast cancer • The importance of avoiding sunburn
• Taking infants, toddlers and older children for all the necessary vaccines, including against flu
• The dangers of smoking, how to quit, and teaching children and husbands not to smoke
• Keeping teeth healthy by brushing, eating healthy snacks and not cheap junk food, often given to children as Shabbat treats, and advising parents not to put babies and toddlers to sleep with bottles filled with sweet liquid and always to put infants to sleep on their backs
• The need to lock doors to prevent kids from wandering out of the home
• Encouraging regular exercise by all family members • Teaching about the risks associated with obesity and anorexia and offering advice on how to eat healthy
• The importance of undergoing genetic tests and scans in pregnancy
• Never leaving children alone in vehicles, even for a moment
• Seeking help early for postpartum depression (PPD), obsessive-compulsive disorders and other psychological and psychiatric problems
• Storing medications and taking them properly in the correct dosages as well as avoiding unproven and potentially dangerous “alternative medicine treatments”