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Heart and Stroke Advocacy Campaign Workshop April 6, 2007 On April 6th, 2007 four members of the Sport and Community Service class attended a workshop at the London Central Public Library on the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s new action plans to make Ontario healthier. Our involvement in this special session was initiated by Professor Craig Boydell in cooperation with Christine Lyszczarz a Community Mission Specialists with the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Four members of the class attended including Bethany Janzen, Alexis Karpacz, Colin O’Brien and Jessica Fitzgerald The primary presenter was Gillian Gemmel, the senior manager of the Ontario Community Missions teams and it was organized by Christine Lyszczarz, the Community Missions Specialist with the London area.
Our group’s interest was in gaining insight into the role university students could play in promoting and motivating elementary school aged children to increase their daily physical activity. This coincides with one of the goals of our various projects completed throughout the semester. It is also a link to future plans of getting more students and specifically athletes involved in community programs promoting a healthier lifestyle to elementary students. In this respect, in one way or another every one of the projects undertaken by the class this year had an underlying health component. The most direct in this connection was a pilot project undertaken by Andrew Judge, another member of the class, in which he made an interactive presentation to a group of 4th graders. Given feedback from both the students and the teacher involved, the response was very positive. Not only did the students enjoy the presentation, they seemed to grasp the central health themes. The presentation involved an information period by Gillian with a focus on Advocacy in health promotion. After a brief intermission we broke off into small groups to discuss an area of health promotion we felt needed change and the steps we would take to advocate for a policy change in this area. This was an example as well of a similar process that would be completed to apply for the HSFO Advocacy Fund. The Fund offers Advocacy Planning Grants and Advocacy Development Grants ranging from $2000 to $25 000 based on an application process. The efforts must be to key stakeholders that support or promote physical activity in elementary schools (grade K-8) and with elementary school aged children (4-13 years). Our group felt especially welcome at this workshop and our attendance was made known to be very appreciated by the organizers. We were readily included in group discussions and respected when we gave our opinions and comments. Our view of specific topics was also solicited to gain a broader understanding of issues in the elementary school system since we were most recently at that stage. In addition, there was an appreciation of the special input we could make as student-athletes given our knowledge of activity and nutrition. We left the workshop with a deeper understanding of the current issues and barriers facing our school system in regards to promoting physical activity and health generally. This will be beneficial in both our future planning of programs as well as our future careers in both education and health care. This was a worthwhile experience that allowed us to experience a real life learning scenario outside of the classroom. We made an oral presentation back to the over all Sport and Community Service Class which led to a wide ranging discussion of this as an area in which student athletes from Western could make a unique contribution. An issue that was revisited in this regard is our plan to create a Committee of Student Athletes with the specific intent of initiating and facilitating direct involvement in community outreach programs by varsity athletes. In order to give such a group some focus in its initial stage we discussed the possibility of selecting one general target area each year to organize our activities around. In this connection we felt that it might be timely to examine ways in which student athletes at Western could be directly involved in programs that would promote health among London Area school children through their direct involvement on and off campus. While there is quite a range of ways in which this could occur, many of the activities of this course over the past two years have created working templates for projects that can now easily adapted and undertaken. A number of the students from the class who will be returning next year have registered in interest putting together some form of Student-Athlete Outreach group over the course of the summer. Submitted by: Contact information: Bethany Janzen - bethanyjanzen@hotmail.com] Professor Craig Boydell – boydell@uwo.ca Christine Lyszczarz, Community Mission Specialist
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