To prevent spread of COVID-19 illness, Avera recommends “social distancing” as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

SIOUX FALLS — People who utilize Avera facilities for their health care who feel they may have been exposed to COVID-19 (coronavirus) or who are displaying symptoms are asked to call 1-877-AT-AVERA (1-877-282-8372), or contact their clinic.

Yankton Medical Clinic, P.C. is pleased to welcome the association of Dr. Charles Harper Jr. and Kelly Jueden, nurse practitioner, to the clinic’s Norfolk location inside the Fountain Point Medical Community facility. Harper specializes in internal medicine and is board certified by the Amer…

SIOUX FALLS — Research published in eClinicalMedicine, an international online clinical journal published by The Lancet, reveals major findings that smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol during pregnancy significantly increase the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

So, you’re past the New Year grind! You’re still pushing your body harder than you have in a long time. With that push comes a little ache here, a little pain there. So, you back off for a bit, which in some cases means we pushed that New Year resolution out the door, after all, it’s hard to…

Yankton Medical Clinic, P.C. laboratory has met all criteria for accreditation by the Commission on Office Laboratory Accreditation (COLA), a national healthcare accreditation organization. Accreditation is given only to laboratories that apply rigid standards of quality in day-to-day operat…

SIOUX FALLS — Avera Sacred Heart Hospital was recently named one of the top 20 rural and community hospitals in the country.

Five Avera hospitals were named 5-Star facilities by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

The Delta Dental Mobile will be rolling into Yankton for the 12th consecutive year to once again provide dental care to local children ages 0-21 at no cost to the child or family.

As cold weather creeps in, we all set our thermostats a little higher to keep warm. When we do, our bill goes up; or the cost of increasing the heat in the house and kicking our furnace in takes more money, or in other words, it takes more energy to keep things heated up.

The next Yankton Area Diabetes Support Group will be held on Monday, Jan. 13, 2020, at 1-2 p.m. on the Avera Sacred Heart campus, Pavilion, Conference Room 2.

HOWARD — In November 2019, the Horizon Health Foundation kicked off the fourth year of their internal Employee Giving Campaign, “Harvesting Good Will.” Through this campaign, Horizon Health Care employees across the state were challenged with a goal of $50,000. Employees shattered their goal…

With the holidays in full swing, the New Year approaching, we know that there will be a huge number of folks looking to keep off those pesky pounds that seem to bother us during the holiday, and an even bigger number of folks that get on the resolution wagon to drop some weight.

On Jan. 14, 2019, John Jorgensen started the Prostate Cancer Support Group. Not knowing if anyone would attend, he said he was pleasantly surprised that there were six people who showed up, all sharing their walk with prostate cancer. Since then, the group has met regularly on the second Mon…

PIERRE — The South Dakota Senior Health Information and Insurance Education (SHIINE) program would like to remind all individuals that Medicare cards with Social Security numbers will no longer be accepted effective Jan. 1, 2020.

LINCOLN, Neb. — The Nebraska State Unit on Aging, a unit of the Division of Medicaid and Long-Term Care at the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, has been approved for a $97,205 grant from the Administration for Community Living for Disaster Assistance for eighty counties that…

Can you spot a training myth when you see one? With so much information being thrown around in every nook and cranny, it can be hard to separate fact from fiction.

SIOUX FALLS — Avera earned the highest level of recognition as a Level 10 “Most Wired” health care organization from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) in its 2019 program.

While scrolling through my Facebook page, I came across a video of a very young athlete a parent had sent me of their son performing a barbell squat on his back. His knees caved in, his back was rounded and the weight he was using appeared to be too much, in my view, because of how he looked…

LINCOLN, Neb. — Open enrollment for the Health Insurance Marketplace began Nov. 1. Nebraskans have the opportunity to find health insurance coverage for the 2020 benefit year through Dec. 15, 2019, at Healthcare.gov.

During his Earth Day speech in 2019, the chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Missouri River Basin, stated openly that “ the flooding during the last two decades has gotten worse, and it is not getting better.” Acknowledging the impact of climate change on flows, he stated: “The longer…

This won’t be new news to you, but Congress sure has a hard time sticking to a budget. Let me back up — Congress has a hard time even creating a budget and many hardworking Americans, including our nation’s military, could end up paying the price.

I thoroughly enjoyed Jim Van Osdel’s column about Charlie Donovan. (Press & Dakotan, Oct. 24) I grew up on the bluff road and knew the Donovans well. The article brought back good memories of those uncomplicated days 80 years ago.

For many of us, when we hear we need to “recover from working out or training,” we think a vacation on the beach or curling up on a couch and making the next few days a movie marathon.

SIOUX FALLS — Walking Forward, along with a team of collaborators, announce a generous five-year grant of $3 million from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, for a two-phase study to advance palliative care in Northern Plains American Indians.

PIERRE — Crisis counseling is available to help South Dakotans in areas impacted by the flooding this year.

Most folks don’t just one day wake up fit, toned and healthy. The majority got that way through a combination of a persistent and consistent program of exercise, diet and implementing healthy habits into their daily lives. The opposite holds true for those that DIDN’T watch food intake, spen…

DENVER — Many babies with eczema go on to develop food allergies, asthma and hay fever, and researchers at National Jewish Health say it’s not a coincidence. The cracks caused by eczema weaken the skin barrier, allowing allergens to penetrate the skin and cause a sequence of allergic disease…

PIERRE — Crisis counseling is available to help South Dakotans in areas impacted by the flooding this year.

The next Yankton Area Diabetes Support Group will be held on Monday, Aug. 12, at 1 p.m. on the Avera Sacred Heart campus, Pavilion, Conference Room 2.

Before you even get into this article — IF YOU ARE A CROSS FIT FAN — take a deep breath, get a chug from your water bottle and swallow a big “chill pill.” I know as soon as we get talking WOD — known as the “Workout of the Day” — and we bring up anything that might rough up the feathers of C…

PIERRE — State Division of Insurance Director Larry Deiter announced the proposed Essential Health Benefits (EHB) benchmark design for plan year 2021 has been approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid/Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CMS/CCIIO).

OMAHA, Neb. — The Nebraska Regional Poison Center in Omaha has issued a warning on the dangers of using or abusing Kratom:

BROOKINGS — The Best Practices Academy™ is proud to announce that First Chiropractic Centers, PC of Yankton has achieved the Patient-Centered Medical Home Recognition for all six of its practice locations by The Compliance Team and also attained DMEPOS accreditation in their two largest loca…

In training, one of the hot topics that I get questioned about is recovery and what does it take to recover from workouts and training. With the jammed packed schedules I see from most of our athletes we train, and even the hectic agenda from our adults we work with, recovery is a bigger key…

PIERRE — The South Dakota Beef Industry Council (SDBIC), on behalf of the beef checkoff, provided educational opportunities and resources to future food and nutrition professionals through South Dakota State Universities’ (SDSU) Nutrition & Dietetic Internship Program. Media training bec…

Outside of crashes, heatstroke is the number one vehicle-related killer of children in the United States. As we enter the hottest months of the year, AAA South Dakota in an attempt to prevent these deaths, reminds parents and caregivers about the dangers of vehicular heatstroke and leaving c…

This happens often. Don’t know if it happens in other professions like it does in health, fitness and performance? I get bombarded all the time with folks asking if they should being doing “A” or do “B” instead?

SIOUX FALLS — Avera has ranked first out of the top 20 organizations that earned a 2019 Customer Approved Award from Lincoln, Nebraska-based healthcare-intelligence firm NRC Health. The award recognizes senior-care organizations across the country for creating an outstanding care experience …

DENVER — Sensitivity or intolerance to foods such as shellfish and milk are common and can cause significant cause for concern, but there is a difference between those symptoms and a true food allergy. Nearly 20 percent of adults report suffering from food allergies, but recent studies show …

BROOKINGS — SDSU Extension recently received two 2019 Administration for Community Living Grants, to fund two unique programs focused on preventing falls and chronic disease self-management.

You might have seen this statement from me before, or heard it on my radio show, “YOU CAN’T OUT TRAIN A BAD DIET.” Meaning if you eat bad, have bad nutrition habits and expect that hour on the treadmill that burns 500 calories to make a dent in the 3,000 calorie soda and candy bar diet you m…

OMAHA, Neb. — Over the past five years, nearly 3,500 people have been killed in crashes involving teen drivers during the 100 Deadliest Days — the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day — when the number of crash fatalities involving a teen driver historically rise.

“My knee just doesn’t feel quite right!”

SIOUX FALLS — During May, American Stroke Month, the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association, the world’s largest voluntary health organization fighting heart disease and stroke, shares seven habits to help prevent stroke.

SIOUX FALLS — The medical journal Pediatrics will publish the first findings from the PASS ECHO study in which the Avera Research Institute’s Center for Pediatric & Community Research is a cohort and grantee.

SIOUX FALLS — Avera Health was this week named one of the nation’s 15 Top Health Systems by IBM Watson HealthTM (NYSE: IBM). The study spotlights the best-performing health systems in the U.S., based on a balanced scorecard of publicly available clinical, operational and patient satisfaction…

An open house for National Cancer Survivors Day will be held from 4-6 p.m. Wednesday, June 5, at the Avera Cancer Institute in Yankton.

We all know that exercise, we can even call it “moving,” is good for us. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services just came out in their newest report and said that, “Seven of the ten most common chronic diseases are favorably influenced by regular physical activity.” Or in coach lan…

Avera Sacred Heart Hospital has been granted a three-year reaccreditation in echocardiography from the Intersocietal Accreditation Commission (IAC). It applies specifically to the areas of adult transesophageal and adult transthoracic echocardiography.