A healthy lifestyle contributes to healthy vision. This is why the Healthy Vision team has traveled the 1,000 kilometers of the Grand Défi Pierre Lavoie on their bicycles for the 9th consecutive year. Composed of Jean Blanchard of Laboratoires Blanchard, Jean-François Lacasse and Martin Lespérance of Essilor Canada, Patrick Boutin of Cooper Vision and Guy Grimard of the Quebec Association of Optometrists, the team is involved with young people throughout the year.

Beyond the 1000km: a long-term vision!
The Grand Défi Pierre Lavoie is not just a 1000km bike challenge. The organization, which aims to mobilize the Québec school environment to support the practice of physical activity and healthy eating among children, asks the teams to sponsor a school in an underprivileged area in order to improve the daily life of young people.

“As Pierre Lavoie said when all the participants at the Grand Défi got together last Thursday:” Prevention must take its place! The best pills are healthy lifestyle habits: 1-Eat better, 2-Move more, 3-Drink water, 4-Sleep well, and of course our Team adds 5- Have a Healthy Vision and visit your eyecare professional regularly”, explains Martin Lespérance

“Beyond Healthy Vision,” says Jean-François Lacasse, “this message of prevention must also reach companies and inspire them to invest in the physical well-being of their employees by installing showers, thereby encouraging cycling as transportation mode and physical activities on lunch hour, which will eventually tip the scale from the healing side toward the preventive side. ”

For the 2016-2017 school year, the Healthy Vision team sponsored the Sainte-Famille school in Sherbrooke, where they donated more than $ 6,000 for sports equipment. In harmony with the prevention message put forward this year by Pierre Lavoie, and because seeing well and learning are inseparable, the team went even further and organized a visual screening for the students, with the collaboration of two volunteer optometrists: Stéphanie Bourque, OD and Lucie Turcotte, OD. The result: 30% of the students who participated in the screening were referred for a complete eye exam, and 6 urgent cases were detected.

Essilor Canada Supports the Healthy Vision Team
To support the Healthy Vision team and the goals of the Grand Défi in matters of health, Essilor Canada invited its employees to cycle on stationary bikes in its parking lot and to participate in a Zumba class on Friday, June 16th. $ 1,525 and 130 energy cubes were accumulated during the activity.

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