Here is the scenario: School bus drivers have the awesome responsibility of conveying our most precious cargo, as well as our greatest future resource, our children. Their unusual and truncated work schedule includes a break of about 3 hours. They have to be hungry; most don’t have time to prepare and eat a proper breakfast.

Many of them have to wake up at 4:00 a.m. 95% are overweight or obese, most have high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Some have diabetes. 80% of African American women in this country are overweight or obese according to American Heart Association statistics. Clearly, this significant phenomena requires alot of attention.

Our health/fitness club, Body Mechanics Fitness & Training, in Lauderhill, Florida, is conducting a pilot study for our health enhancement program, “The Wellness Plan.” We were fortunate to have the opportunity to work with a group of bus drivers from the Northwest Transportation Center of the School Board of Broward County, the nation’s 5th largest School Board with 37,000 employees, about 1300 of which are bus drivers. We are starting to make headway, and one of our motivational tools is our mantra: “When we get in shape, we’re going on Oprah!”

Now, to be totally fair, this expression was first used by Tony Ferguson, one of the partners of Body Mechanics Fitness & Training, when he is motivating his personal training clients. That said, our collective vision of showing our “before” pictures, and displaying a bit of our hiphop routine, and maybe even sharing our Best Health Salad Dressing recipe on Oprah, is a titillating and an enjoyable goal.

Major breakthrough this week: Cheryl M., who is charge of the cooking operation in the Driver’s Lounge, is putting aside the normal fare, which consisted of pancakes, grits, eggs and delicious-smelling albeit greasy pork sausage, and is offering fresh vegetable salads with a choice of proteins. Anyway, we just wanted to let you know we’re doing our best to get in shape and we’ll keep you posted as to our progress. Stephanie Shorr May 2008