HANDs on Health, a symposium event put on by Cal Poly’s Science through Translational Research in Diet and Exercise (STRIDE) association brought four heProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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th-conscious speakers to the Christopher Cohan Performing Arts Center (PAC) on Oct. 22.
The goal was to inform the youth and community on how to live a healthier, more active and more sustainable life.
Congresswoman Lois Capps, Dr. Deanna Hoelscher, Dr. Steven Kelder and Michael R. Dimock came to speak and spread their messages about the need for change in an American society headed toward diabetes and obesity.
Capps was a registered nurse before entering Congress in 1998 to serve the Central Coast. She said though the legislature is trying to make the necessary changes in order to provide a healthier lifestyle for America, it is the community who must rise up and push Congress to make a change against special interests.
“One of our challenges is to find ways to illuminate who’s behind … propositions and why they are and what that does to (our health), and call them out on it,” Capps said. “And call them out in ways that will not just be punitive, but will invite them to join in.”
Capps also said she wanted to hear from the students and the community in order to make more informed decisions and proposals for health policy. Additionally, Capps detailed the health care changes made by Congress, such as allowing students to stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26 years-old and “lessening the stress of a copay,” among other measures. However, she said the health reform changes were not perfect.
Hoelscher is the director for the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Advancement of Healthy Living and a professor of Health Promotion at the University of Texas School of Public Health, according to her biography in the pamphlet provided at HANDs on Health. She said the community must take action, especially in the case of children, who need more exercise and food with nutritional value rather than what they are being provided. Hoelscher said because of this, more children are becoming obese, and “in some schools, (this is) becoming the norm.”
“When I worked in CATCH initially in the early 90s, if you saw a child with high blood pressure, chances are they had genetic problems … and now that’s not the case,” Hoelscher said. “In some of the overweight kids we’re seeing hypertension (and) type 2 diabetes.”
According to the pamphlet, Kelder is a professor in the School of Public Health at University of Texas, Austin, co-director of the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Advancement of Healthy Living and is Hoelscher’s husband. He spoke about the importance of getting children healthy and provided insight into the program mentioned by Hoeschler — Coordinated Approach To Child Health (CATCH), which they both participate in.
According to its website, CATCH is a Texas-based program that focuses on school nutrition, lessons in the classroom to teach children healthy habits, more physical education time for children and an emphasis on the family to help children make healthier decisions at home. Kelder said these points when describing the program, as well as the need for health-driven lessons and activities for children.
“It’s (recommended children get) 60 minutes or more (of physical activity per day), and it’s the ‘and more’ part (which) just goes on and on,” Kelder said. “To get school-aged kids to get 60 minutes of physical activity at school, our schools are not set up for 60 minutes of physical activity. Most of them are not. Most of them won’t even take 30 minutes of physical activity per day. They might take 15, they might (get it) every other day. Every school is different.”
Guest speaker Dimock is president of Roots of Change (ROC), a nonprofit, non-governmental organization whose purpose is to spawn a sustainable food system in California by 2030, according to the pamphlet. Dimock said in order to get children and the community healthier, people need to have access to less expensive, fresher and more nutritious foods because Americans are “addicted to cheap food.”
“When (ROC) began, the whole idea was that the food system needs fixing, and this began in an agricultural world where we’re having a lot of impact from the way food is being grown, both soil, water impacts and other resource impacts,” Dimock said. “But it actually emerged to be once people started looking at the problems in agriculture, the problems in agriculture are not based in agriculture. They’re actually based in the food system (in which) society is calling upon.”
Dimock said “40 percent of food produced goes to waste,” which is something ROC is trying to fight against in making food more sustainable. He also said there needs to be more fruits and vegetables in people’s diets and ROC is working toward trying to make those foods more affordable.
HANDs on Health provided an outlet for these health professionals to inform the students of changes they should make so their generation does not head down the same path. According to Hoelscher and Capps, it is predicted that one in three people will have diabetes. Hoelscher said symposiums like HANDs on Health provide a great learning opportunity for students.
“I think they’re great,” Hoelscher said. “I think the more we can get people together to talk about this issue, the more chances you have to making someone or igniting a passion in someone or just getting information out to people to (make better decisions).”
Dr. Ann McDermott, the director of STRIDE, said it was important for college students to be more informed now.
“A bachelor’s degree is the terminal degree, so we have a window of time in which we know we can influence a lot of people and raise awareness,” McDermott said.
Stephanie Teaford, the community liaison for STRIDE, said events like this are beneficial for students “to get a sense of the public health.”
However, she said there wasn’t a specific problem at Cal Poly; rather, she said it is more a problem in our nation as a whole and there are more things that people can do to be healthier and influence others.
“I would love to see students taking advantage of any extra physical activity they can get during the day: walking to campus if they’re close, using the stairs if that’s an option in buildings,” Teaford said. “I love the idea of them choosing whole foods when they’re in the cafeteria. I think there’s a lot of things they don’t think about that impact their health: getting good rest, plenty of sleep.”
Teaford also said the Flash study, which STRIDE puts on, brings awareness to the fact “college health isn’t studied very thoroughly, (and) it’s a huge value to see how the college experience affects your health.” She said she hoped more students would take the study so STRIDE could have a better grasp of college students’ health.
Wendy Minarik, a local dietitian, said it was necessary to understand the impact of health and food decisions made today on the future.
“Pay now or pay later though,” Minarik said. “If you don’t pay now, you will be paying later in so many ways: in medication, in surgeries, in treatment, in quality of life and in limited lifespan.”
Minarik also said it was important to emphasize Dimock’s point in his speech about “food deserts,” which are places that have little access to the essential healthy foods (or those foods are more expensive), while having significant access to unhealthy fast food chains. Minarik experienced a “food desert” herself and said it was essential for this issue to be addressed.
“We had (a couple convenience stores) and a little market and that was the poorest quality food I’ve ever had access to,” Minarik said. “When I moved here, I had the most terrific produce, good quality meats and it was cheaper. Why here?”
During Dimock’s speech, he said healthier food is more expensive, especially in these “food deserts,” but ROC is working toward making policy changes to make food accessible to needy and low income families, as well as providing more benefits to farmers and farm workers in order to create more environmentally efficient ways of producing healthier foods. According to the ROC website, this is part of a “policy making activity” called “Ag Vision.”
Sandra Miller, another local dietitian who attended the event, said people need to get their priorities straight, like focusing on the quality of their food more than how many text messages they are allotted. She also said the food policies of our country supplement the trend of bad health.
“Our rules and our regulations that we have developed and our (agriculture) policies (are) toxic, and it’s sick, and it’s made the environment sick,” Miller said. “And it’s very wasteful.”
Dr. Susan Swadener, another dietitian and the dietetic intern director at Cal Poly, mirrored Capps when she said the “public needs to demand” better health standards. Yet, she said it is hard to fight big money.
“I think an interesting thing about the meeting today is that you can make changes,” Swadener said. “In fact, people like Lois Capps, folks like her … say ‘I want to know what you young people coming into the field want.’ I think having people like that and going to those people (is beneficial).”
In addition, Dimock said Cal Poly students are the future and must understand the need for a more sustainable, health conscious and environmentally conducive food environments.
“Cal Poly produces more of the leaders of California agriculture than any other, more than UC Davis,” Dimock said. “People that run farming companies come out of Cal Poly, and it’s absolutely essential that they understand what we mean by (our message).”