Audio slideshow: Learn more about the Flash health surveys from kinesiology professor Ann McDermott.
It all started with strategically positioned, high-calorie processed goodies in The Avenue on campus, which made a light bulb go on inside the head of kinesiology professor Ann McDermott.
“When I came back from summer break and walked into The Avenue and saw how the food was set up, I said, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to kill our students,'” McDermott said. “It was designed for impulse buying of giant-sized candy bars and giant-sized Pepperidge Farm cookie eight-packs.
“Shouldn’t we be trying to promote a healthy weight in our own student population?” McDermott asked.
After mapping out the things she would like to do for the upcoming year, McDermott realized research needed to be done to assess students’ health perceptions as opposed to health realities.
When McDermott was speaking at the University of Texas during the research time of their healthy weight clinic, she asked for advice as to what Cal Poly needed to know more of regarding health.
The research team told her to “take a good look at the college students, because of the fact that they are entering school in a much different health state than ever before.”
Three surveys were developed and distributed to about 400 students enrolled in classes such as KINE 210: Healthy Living.
McDermott worked with Kris Jankovitz, a kinesiology professor at Cal Poly who is the co-investigator on this project. They have worked together to develop many pilot studies being conducted this spring, including WHAM! Club and the Pink Chefs, which are after-school programs for middle school girls.
McDermott’s hypothesis for the surveys was that people are not as knowledgeable as some assume, and that people will underestimate their weight and overestimate their height.
“People don’t own scales today so it’s very easy to have weight start to creep up and you aren’t even aware of it,” McDermott said. “Your clothes might fit a little differently but that isn’t an objective measure.”
The surveys consisted of students filling out a standardized questionnaire that included some general but important questions to gauge how aware students were of their overall health, including weight and blood pressure.
These questions were asked because “they are associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and historically we haven’t seen those in young people,” McDermott said. “But because now the obesity rates have tripled and quadrupled in pediatric populations, many students are now entering college heavier than ever before.”
Behavior-type questions, including ones like whether or not students eat breakfast, help determine what should be looked for in the future.
“Some of the questions I really don’t have any idea about, so we’re catching some baseline data,” McDermott said. “It’s really going to open the door for research in the future.”
After filling out the questionnaire, students had their resting heart rate tested, their blood pressure taken, their waist measured, their body mass index (BMI) calculated after being weighed, and their height taken by an assessment team of students.
Darshana Patel, a student volunteer for the surveys, got involved after her physiology professor informed her class of the event.
“In our labs we do a lot of this kind of stuff – weight assessment, BMI, height, blood pressure – so he just wanted us to help with this survey,” she said.
One of the students being tested was construction management freshman Elle Navarro, who said she had an idea of what her blood pressure would be.
“I didn’t know the exact number,” Navarro said. “I think the study is definitely good to get the average of all the students. I’m not exactly sure what they are going to do with the results, but it’s good to see how healthy Cal Poly is.”
Though the students tested were technically a skewed population due to the fact that they are enrolled in a health class and are more likely to be aware of some health-related topics, next year McDermott would like to test students from different colleges and classes.
“I would like to go to different classes, chemistry, physics, even different fraternities and sororities, because you might find that there’s a difference between each individual college setting,” McDermott said.
Results for these surveys will most likely be accounted for in the summer or fall after McDermott finds someone to help enter all of the data and results.
“My goal for 2009 is that we do (surveys during) Week of Welcome and take a look at the thousands of students that make up the incoming class,” McDermott said.