PARRISH - Long-haul truckers spend weeks at a time on the road. Often, about the only exercise they get is shifting gears, and sometimes they rely on a diet of fast food with too many calories and too few nutrients.
The result can be health problems like high blood pressure and diabetes, said Jeri Dunkin, professor and Martha Saxon Chair of Rural Nursing at the University of Alabama's Capstone College of Nursing.
So Dunkin has a high-tech health intervention. She is proposing a study to remotely keep tabs on truckers' blood pressure and blood sugar levels with a wireless hookup to a nurse. If successful, such a system could improve trucker health, head off accidents and cut insurance costs.
