Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long: Where’s Pat? Patricia, my co-chair with Cancer Consortium. I feel guilty. I came in, I’m not Catholic, but I hear I have the guilt of a Catholic. I don’t know if you are, but I usually am here early morning, setting up, and been co-chairing since Bill Bower stepped down and to Heather and the others, I don’t know if you’ve thanked those today, but I can tell you as co-chair takes a lot of energy and effort for the planning committee. And so I am so proud to be part of the group. And I know Dr. Nick and probably Grubs and others are hiding in the back row, just like at church, hiding in the back row. I just want to say, thank you. I know Governor Carney’s coming this afternoon. And for those of you who go way back, you’ll recall that John and I both looked a little bit younger when we started out on this journey with you with the Cancer Consortium.
At that time, I was a university faculty, was not even elected. Had the honor to being one of the first seven on the consortium and had worked our ways up. And John, at that time, was Lieutenant governor. And it’s been a real passion of ours for the Cancer Consortium and to have our keynote speaker join us today, Project Play and others, it’s just fabulous to see the role that we’ve been able to go from treatment, mortality, morbidity to really beginning today, looking at prevention and how we merge our different commissions. To those of you in the audience who are of the preventative nature, nutrition, exercise, we want to thank you because you are truly at the forefront of what will be the most important thing for our budget. It is very difficult to measure return on investment from nutrition and exercise up front, but we know that those benefits are there.
And so from the Cancer Consortium, we had great big goals and I am so proud of the fact that we attained those goals and measures. And to Heather and the staff and all who’ve been committed, Lisa and Rich and Dr. [inaudible 00:02:00], it’s a team. And without you with any chronic disease, whether we’re looking, I see Don Post here with the diabetes program, to any other outreach, it really does make a difference. And we know that physical activity and nutrition are really the two areas that we can move the needle on. And I’m just so pleased to be part of that. As we look at the data and I’m excited to see the speakers this afternoon, I’m sure we’re going to hear some evidence-based practice. We’ve all heard the studies 2005, 2008, 2009, Texas, California, children, whether in our schools, how many here are from a school?
How many from childcare, early learning? Faith-based organizations? Wherever you might be in the community, play is important. The data are there. Those studies show, whether in California, Texas, that the more active our children are, whether we’re following the national guidelines for 60 minutes or those of us in Delaware, we came up with our own plan a few years ago with Sandy and others, with the Governor’s Council on Health Promotion, Linda Wolf in the corner. We finagled, we fought, we argued. Is it 150 minutes of activity a week? What are we going to do with our wellness centers, department of ed? We all looked at those data and we recognized that week had make children have better test scores. And so today let’s celebrate what we can do, what we have done and take the cancer initiative to this whole new level of prevention in our children and into our future, because we know that recess helps.
I vote for recess in the general assembly. Nobody’s done that with me yet, but you think about it, 15, 20 minutes of play, we get better test scores. We might have better legislation. A little fizzle, a few more pushups, right? A little more exercise. We might have that. And we see that those data are there nationally with our kids. Think about it as adults, but it is imperative. We make excuse says, oh, I’m too busy. I overslept. I had to drive to take the car to the dealer, whatever. But for our children, it really is important that we have recess and we have play and activity integrated. I’m going to wrap up to keep you on time, but I’m so honored as your newest Lieutenant Governor and you all know me as I look out in the audience, I don’t think there’s a face I don’t know, going back. And some of you, like Fred Brookleman, have secrets on me 20 years ago. My office door is always open. Brian Gordon is here with me. I’m on the third floor of Tatnall.
I have a great meeting space if you need it. And also up at the Carvel building. I apologize to the consortium staff because usually I try to be here all day and torment you, but today I have to leave, but I want to say thank you to everyone in here. And I’m so, so serious about the fact that you really do make the difference. And we have to get the word out to our families and to our community. With that, I want to stop. I want to thank the guests who’ve traveled to share their wisdom with us and your book, which looks great and also to the afternoon and the panel. And I hope that you walk out of here with some great ideas. Come visit, come see us. If we need to make some more policy change, we don’t mind doing that either. Again, thank you Rich for being the emcee and thank you to Pat who has picked up the weight this year as the co-chair of the cancer consortium and just have a great day and make sure, Rich, everybody gets recess at lunch. All right. Thank you.