Lynn McCollum-Lasher

My name is Lynn McCollum-Lasher and I created “Let’s Walk”. It's a service that connects people that want or need someone to walk with them, with a trained volunteer that can meet them at their home to help. So many people lose their contact with the world outside their home after a bout of illness and this leads to a spiral of depression and limited mobility followed by physical deterioration. Walking has been shown, through various studies by the American Heart Association, the Diabetes Foundation, the Arthritis Institute, cancer prevention programs and mental health studies, to slow or prevent disease processes.
Working as a Home Health Physical Therapist(PT) for over 25 years, in the Charleston area, I have noted a consistent pattern of limited follow through for walking after discharge. Walking is part of a PT regimen, typically when the prescribed course of therapy ends, the walking also stops, often simply due to a lack of a co-walker. Let’s Walk participation will assist them with continuing their walking program. This will impact their lives in a positive way. There is potential to keep our seniors strong enough to get out and enjoy family, friends and important events. Let’s Walk makes it easy to continue the accompanied walking long after a patient has “graduated” from prescribed therapy to help keep the strength and mobility gained. It will also make it easier to get out to engage with family and friends. Walkers will qualify as low fall risk and volunteers will be trained and undergo background checks. The service will be funded by grants and donations and will be free to all participants. Participating will result in much lower health care costs as many expensive disease processes will be more well managed, decreasing the cost for the individuals but also significantly reducing the expense of the insurers for covering poorly managed, expensive diseases.