Fitness and Wellbeing: Room 6
Combatting Non-communicable Diseases through Community Based Exercise
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Meredith Harris
This project focuses on NCD occurance prevent the potential for stigma associated with HIV. The use of exercise/physical activity of moderate intensity was proposed for combating NCDs. Although there was interest from the grass roots to the highest public health levels, implementation was arduous requiring many levels of approval before implementation. This paper addresses the implementation obstacles that were overcome and the plans implemented to bring regular moderate physical activity to people whose culture did not easily initially embrace the concept. Implications: With the now widespread use of ART and the increasing incidence of NCDs, the need for community based moderate physical activity has increased. The initial project was met with enthusiasm with participants voicing feelings of empowerment toward addressing their own health and in furthering the cultural change toward regular exercise/physical activity. The goal of prevention and decreasing the effects of the NCD health burden is possible through wide spread community based grass roots exercise/physical activity programs.
Task-oriented Physical Preparedness and the Assessment of South African Emergency Medical Care Students
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dagmar Muhlbauer
Literature exists that reviews the physical preparedness requirements and assessments for paramedics, policemen and firefighters but there is little that focuses on the assessment of physical preparedness for emergency medical care (EMC) providers who are engaged in emergency medical care and medical rescue. Students registered for the four-year Professional Degree in EMC are required to engage in emergency medical care and medical rescue as part of their core curriculum with the intention of producing a graduate that is an expert in both. Based on this, it is essential that EMC students are exposed to a physical training programme and assessment that is contextually relevant to the specific components of fitness required to safely engage with the programme content. The universities presenting the BEMC programmes all require a level of physical preparedness of their EMC students but each institute is utilizing a different assessment tool, many of which are not scientifically validated and/or properly linked to the outcomes of the EMC and medical rescue modules. The researcher is currently engaged in a doctoral study with the aim to address this knowledge gap through the development and validation of a tool for the assessment of physical preparedness for South African EMC students. A prospective, descriptive, exploratory sequential design was selected for this study. This presentation intends presenting the results of the first phase which utilized a desktop study to explore and describe the context of physical preparedness in the field of EMC and medical rescue and how this relates to the Degree.
Interventions to Promote Physical Activity in Asian Youth: Results from Econometric Studies
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chen-Kang Chang, Chia Yu Yeh
The world is facing an unprecedented epidemic of physical inactivity in children and adolescents, which is a major risk factor for non-communicable diseases in young and old generations. This article summarizes the results from 3 econometric studies based on data in Taiwanese adolescents. The interventions to promote physical activity in Asian youth are suggested according to these results. Study 1 suggested that school in the neighborhood is the most important environmental factor for physical activity in Asian cities. After controlling for the endogeneity by adopting a treatment effect model, we showed that the adolescents who usually exercised at schools had 152% higher physical activity than those who did not. Study 2 found an endogenous relationship between obesity and physical activity. This relationship indicated a vicious circle in which lower levels of physical activity leads to overweight, while those who are already overweight engage in less physical activity. Study 3 showed that meeting the physical activity guidelines in Taiwan significantly reduced the risk of obesity and underweight in boys but not girls. The potential interventions in Asian cities to promote physical activity include to provide more organized after-school programs such as sport teams or clubs using the school facilities; to provide appropriate counseling programs and peer support to those who are overweight and obese to break the vicious circle; to emphasize on the frequency of participation in physical activity, rather than its total amount, in order to prevent obesity in girls.
Mental Health Needs for College Student Athletes: Game Over Concepts
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amy Mayes
College student-athletes are at an increased risk for mental-health disorders that disrupt their overall wellbeing and performance. The majority of student-athletes stay silent about their emotional state because their glamorized stereotype on campus contradicts the stigma associated with mental health decline (Hendrickson, 2018; Velasco, 2017; Mayes, 2018). Many ex-athletes believe that they experience the same stages of grief as a death due to their exposure to overwhelming circumstances in their playing careers (Tinley, 2015; Mayes 2018). However, every college student-athlete experiences stress. That stress is different than their non-athlete peers because of their schedule and physical turmoil that they are encountering on a daily basis (Mayes, 2018). The majority of athletic programs are lacking in the support they can give to a student-athletes overall wellbeing at this time. Only about 39% Division I university athletic programs in the US have a full-time licensed mental health professional in their athletic department, which proves a large and detrimental gap of available services(Spencer, 2018). Athletic programs need to begin to prioritize the need for mental health professionals and training for their coaches and staff. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has an opportunity to implement mandatory standards for athletic programs and create a culture where care seeking support for mental health issues becomes as normative as seeking care for physical issues.
