Although she has long kept fit with regular exercise, Sarah McAvoy knew she could be healthier. A single mom who lies in Sanford and works in south Orlando, her habit was to scarf down just one or two meals a day, and often fast food at that.

Not anymore. Thanks to a new, medically focused wellness program that her company is paying for, the 30-year-old project manager says she’s eating healthier and her exercise regimen of walking and weight training has become more efficient.

In the month since she started at the Campisi Health Centers, affiliated with Orlando Regional Healthcare’s Dr. P. Phillips Hospital, MCAvoy has lowered her body fat, increased her energy level and, she reports, “I’m a lot less irritable than I used to be.”

Her two children are benefiting as well, she said, because the food she cooks at home is now more nutritional, thanks to the instruction she has received from the Campisi program.

McAvoy works for Pooley Enterprises Inc., an Orlando general contractor that specializes in renovations and additions for hotels and theme parks. The company’s owner, Richard Pooley, tried the Campisi program himself for a month before offering it to more than a dozen of his employees, including McAvoy.

The four-month program is costing him about $2,000 per employee, but he thinks it is money well spent. IT could result in lower health-insurance costs for his business, he said, although that’s not his main motivation.

“We’ll have healthier people with clearer minds that wind up doing good work in the long run,” said Pooley, 64, who added that the program has helped rid him of chronic back pain,

He now spends as much as an hour at a time, five days a week, on a home treadmill, walking at a 3 ½ -mile-an-hour pace with a heart rate monitor to make sure he stays within his most-efficient “fat-burning zone” of 98 to 107 heartbeats per minute.

It’s boring, he acknowledges, but he no longer gets tired at work like he used. “I have constant energy all day now,” he said.

Dr. Frank Campisi, an Orlando surgeon for the past 25 years who is now on staff at Phillips Hospital (formerly Sand Lake Hospital), originally opened his health center independently in June 2005.

Goal: ‘Keep people well’

His goal, he said, was “to keep people well rather than doing surgery on them,” using a team of experts in medicine, nutrition, exercise and, in some cases, mental health to provide an individualized approach to wellness.

He designed it for both the very fit and the very fat, with a particular focus on those who are overweight.

He sold Orlando Regional on the idea. His health center became a department of Phillips Hospital in May and begun marketing the concept to local businesses.

The first to sign up was Trinity Tile, an Orlando wholesales, which paid for 10 of its employees to take part in a yearlong program.

“You meet with a trainer, a nutritionist and a doctor. There’s also an office manager who schedules all your appointments,” said Nellie Velez, a tile-showroom manager who has been enrolled at Campisi for the past five months.

Velez, who is in her 40s, said she has lost 15 pounds and lowered her total cholesterol count from 230 to 180.

All Trinity Tile employees on the program have lost weight, Velez reports, “and our boss pays for everything. WE figure if he’s investing in us, we should put forth our best effort.”

Possible Expansion
Paul Johns, a Phillips Hospital administrator who oversees the Campisi center, said the hospital hopes to open additional centers under the Campisi name if this one is a success.

Marketing of the program, open to individuals, families and employers, is just getting started, Johns said. Presentation have been given recently for employers including Lockheed Martin and Coca-Cola.

Within a month, the hospital plans to subsidize the program for as many as 100 of its own employees.

It’s not cheap. For individuals, the cost ranges from $1,500 for a four-month program to $2,500 for a full year. IT features extensive initial and follow-up testing that includes measurements of body fat, resting and active metabolic rates, and a “VO2 max” test – usually reserved for elite athletes – which measures the body’s ability to use oxygen during exercise.

“We’re trying to get ahead of the curve on not getting disease,” Campisi said. “The corporate world needs to get involved. You can’t just say, ‘Go and workout.’ You need a team of people who can stick with patients all the way through, and patients don’t understand nutrition and exercise.”