LEWISTON – Central Maine Medical Center’s Health and Wellness Services will offer a six-week health education program beginning in May.

Healthy Lifestyle Changes, a program focusing on proper nutrition and exercise as the means for improving health, will begin on May 10. The program will feature an hour-long educational class at 5 p.m. Mondays.

Participants will also have the opportunity to join in two weekly exercise sessions with a personal health counselor.

At the outset of the program, participants will be offered a ScoreKeeper cardiac risk evaluation. ScoreKeeper is more than a simple screening tool, it provides “clients” with a personalized health status report, a plan for modifying health behavioral risk and educational materials. The information is also mailed to the client’s physician for follow-up.

The test is administered by a registered nurse and the initial client/nurse encounter ends with a cardiac risk assessment and produces an individually tailored recommendation for lowering identified risks. The Franklin Scorekeeper program is designed to assist health counselors in helping people improve health behaviors and chronic disease self-management. A ScoreKeeper evaluation will also be offered at the conclusion of the program.

As part of the Franklin Health Model, ScoreKeeper was developed by Dr. Burgess Record and his wife, Sandy, a registered nurse, who have worked in the Farmington area for more than 30 years.

The Franklin Health Model has been associated with improvements in health behaviors (such as smoking cessation), risk factor control (such as high blood pressure), perceived quality of life, health resource utilization (such as preventable hospitalizations), reduced healthcare costs, improved life expectancy and lower death rates.

The ScoreKeeper risk assessment service, being offered by the Central Maine Heart and Vascular Institute, delivers the services of specially trained nurses, supported by ScoreKeeper software, who offer individualized health risk screening, counseling, referral and follow-up.

ScoreKeeper helps individuals, doctors, nurses and other health counselors identify, understand, improve and monitor the interrelated behaviors, risk factors, illnesses and other issues that contribute to a person’s health status.

A fee will be charged for participation in the Healthy Lifestyle Changes program. For more information or to register, call 795-2473.