"One ounce of prevention is worth a poundof cure."  -Benjamin Franklin

At St. Mary's Hospital, preventative care is akey focus. Why wait for symptoms to develop and progress, if you can preventthem in the first place? Preventative care encompasses "teaching people tolive healthy lives and working to foster a healthy society" from allfacets of life: mind, body and spirit.

In 2006, associate administrator Jennifer Chen,convinced a Taitung native by the name Shunzi to set-up and run a health clubon a vacant area within the hospital grounds. Two years later what started asthe blueprint for a simple coffee-shop in which patients and their relativeswould have a comfortable place to rest, was transformed into a luxurious healthcenter with slanted, white walls and long-lattice windows. Now open to thepublic on a daily basis, St. Mary's Health Club provides the county-residentswith delicious organic food and affordable healthy-living classes which provideinstruction on a wide array of subjects from diet and nutrition to physicalfitness and stress relief.