Planners of next month’s Active Living Summit hopes local residents are motivated to get moving, shed excess pounds and pay attention to their health.
“We want to engineer physical activity back into our lives,” said Dr. Gregory Heath, head of the department of health and human performance at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “We’ve done a great job of engineering it out.”
Chattanooga will host its first Active Living Summit at UTC on April 25-26. The UC Foundation funded the event through a $25,000 international faculty development grant, Dr. Heath said.
The event aims to coordinate local efforts to boost physical activity.
“One of the problems in this community is that we have many good things going on, but they’re isolated,” said Allan Lewis, director of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation and prevention at Memorial Hospital who helped plan the summit.
Experts from Latin America who have developed successful health promotion initiatives will discuss their approaches during the event.
Andrea Torres, a Colombian physical therapist, will speak on the success of a four-year campaign to reduce inactivity called Muévete Bogota. From 1999 to 2003, Muévete Bogota helped lower the number of inactive citizens from 84 percent to 64 percent, she said.
Public health advocates agree that inactivity has become a crisis worldwide.
Being inactive boosts the risk of a heart attack as much as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, the American Heart Association reports.
More than two-thirds of Tennessee’s residents — compared to only half of Americans — are not active enough to prevent serious health consequences.
Yet the country is becoming more sedentary. A widely reported recent study, for example, found the typical American now spends 25 percent less time outdoors than in 1987. The decline parallels the widespread use of video games, computers, the Internet and cable television.
John Bilderback, Step One program manager for Hamilton County, said barriers to activity include land development without sidewalks, greenways, bike paths or playgrounds, crime and/or lack of organized group sports and exercise opportunities. Step One is a countywide health promotion program.
“Chattanooga has worked very hard creating areas like the Riverwalk for people to use — and a large number of people use it. But we’d like more people to go and use it,” Mr. Bilderback said.
Moving key to being and staying fit, losing pounds
* UC Foundation backs conference to find ways to encourage physical fitness.
FOR INFORMATION
Reserve your space for the free Chattanooga Active Living Summit at (423) 425-4323. Continuing education credit is $10.
Speakers include:
* Dr. Michael Pratt of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
* Dr. Kenneth Powell, a public health and epidemiologic consultant in Atlanta
* Gregory Heath, epidemiologist and head of the department of health and human performance at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
* Andrea Torres, co-creator of Muévete Bogota, a communitywide physical activity campaign in Bogota, Colombia
The international conference, featuring UTC and CDC researchers, involves community-based programs to motivate people to be more active, thus reducing obesity and promoting overall good health.
