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Healthy Living Taste Maker: Jason Fitzgerald

Dee Physical Therapy has a few major benefits to its location on San Remo Drive off of Dorset Street in South Burlington- one of the most important to me and other staff members; The fact that it’s walking distance from Healthy Living & Café. Our love of this particular store is due to the friendly and knowledgeable staff, the major support Healthy Living gives to our annual Diaper Drive, and the fact that we at Dee PT are in the business of health and healing.

The occupations of Physical Therapist, Exercise Physiologist, Physical Therapy Assistant, Aid, and the like, tend to bring together health minded and healthy eating peoples who are more than happy to peruse aisles of fresh fruit and natural products. Our predilections may be because in the process of rehabilitation and healing, nutrition is an integral part. I feel comfortable giving suggestions and recommendations to patients knowing that they will receive appropriate information from staff within each of Healthy Livings’ departments, from locally sourced produce and meats to Vitamins and supplements. I am confident that patients will be able to find offerings at Healthy Living that meet any dietary restrictions they may have, as well as enjoy a variety of wellness classes. I am equally confident that one of our receptionists is unaware there are sections to the store other than the ones that house chocolate and wine- and that’s fine too.

Healthy Livings’ products support us and our patient’s bodies, while the owners support my and Dee Physical Therapy’s biggest cause and fundraiser: The annual Dee PT Diaper Drive.

Every year, starting in November, we start to collect diapers in the Dee PT lobby to be donated to the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS). I started the Dee PT Diaper Drive eight years ago and the owners of Healthy Living have been supporters from the start, not just by donating an incredible amount of diapers each year, but by allowing us to advertise in the store and connecting us to other local businesses. The largest donation to the Diaper Drive to date, over five thousand diapers, came from the relationship built between Healthy Living, Dee Physical Therapy, and Seventh Generation. One of the highlights of this collaboration has to be that point every year when Eli and his staff and I try to figure out how to effectively transport the aforementioned five thousand plus diapers the fifty or so yards from their store to the Dee PT office. My suggestions of constructing ¬¬a zip-line or a catapult are never met with much enthusiasm for some reason…

It is exciting for me to be asked to be a Tastemaker; It allows local business people and community members to be involved in the evolution of the store, making it ‘ours’ in a small way. I look forward to sharing with others what Healthy Living has to offer and to collaborating with them in the future in ways that will tie together what we do here at Dee Physical Therapy, with what they excel at those fifty short yards down the road.

So keep an eye out for me over at the café, because I am there for lunch pretty much every day. Everyone seems to know me and says hello and calls me by name; but that may be because I always forget to take off my name tag.