April 2, 2019 – On Saturday, March 23, 2019, nearly 200 philanthropists, physicians, community leaders, and supporters attended A Night on the Scarlet Express, a gala benefit for the South Asian Heart Center at El Camino Hospital. The El Camino Hospital Foundation fundraising event held at the Computer History Museum raised $236,000 to support the Center’s screening, prevention and research programs.
“This is an exciting time for the South Asian Heart Center,” Ashish Mathur, executive director of the South Asian Heart Center at El Camino Hospital told the guests. He cited the American Heart Association’s study that validates and recommends the Center’s pioneering lifestyle management approach to mitigating South Asians’ disproportionate risk for heart disease and diabetes. Mathur said, “The key and what makes the Center unique, is that it provides personalized coaching to help participants adopt and sustain healthy choices over the long term.”
“Knowledge does not equal behavior change,” explained Anita Sathe, who became the Center’s first coach 13 years ago and oversees all case management. “Our health coaches can help break down the daunting task of lifestyle change into smaller achievable goals. We discuss the barriers and challenges participants face and help find the alternatives that will work for them.”
Keynote speaker Gopi Kallayil, chief evangelist of brand marketing at Google and author of The Happy Human, credited the MEDS (meditation, exercise, diet, sleep) formula that his coaches at the South Asian Heart Center taught him for keeping his pre-diabetes under control and helping him recover from a collapse driven by stress and overscheduling. “The most important and most complex, sophisticated technology we use is not our phone but our body and our brain,” Kallayil said. “MEDS helps us keep our body in a state of peak performance, which in turn gives us a peak experience of life. As such MEDS is not only the pathway to health; it is a simple formula for happiness.”
Following Kallayil’s talk, Assemblymember Ash Kalra, with assistance from gala fundraising chairs Bhavna Agarwal and Prerana Vaidya, led the Top Hearts Fund-in-Need Appeal in which a donor committed $20,000 to honor the memory of his parents. The gala concluded with dancing to the music of DJ Salim.
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ABOUT THE EL CAMINO HOSPITAL FOUNDATION
El Camino Hospital Foundation is a charitable organization that secures gifts to support the strategic priorities of El Camino Hospital. The Foundation awards grants to El Camino Hospital for operating support, capital purchases and improvements, and innovations that foster and support personalized care.