Active health - promoting health through sport for girls: partners in health — Agentur Pty Ltd

Active health - promoting health through sport for girls: partners in health (133)

Michelle Dickson 1 , Geoffrey Angeles 1 , Alicia Poto 1 , Rohanee Cox 2 , Steve Peam 3
  1. Indigenous Health Programs, Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  2. Sydney University Flames WNBL, WNBL Basketball, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  3. Rotary District, Rotary, Northern Beaches, NSW, Australia

Background: Healthy lifestyle messages and positive experiences with physical activity empowers students to make better immediate, and future, choices about their health. There are many school and community  based health programs that connect with sporting codes that appeal, more traditionally, to male students. Our community partner, and funding body, Rotary District 9685, saw this need and worked with us to develop this pilot project. This health promotion program provided female sporting role models, and engaging healthy lifestlye activities to both encourage further uptake of sport for girls, but also to support them in making healthy lifestlye choices in the formative period in their lives. The program also appealled to boys who engaged with basketball.

Methods:  Elite athletes, Alicia Poto and Rohanee Cox worked collaboratively with Aboriginal public health professionals and academics, Michelle Dickson and Geoffrey Angeles,  to develop a basketball and healthy eating clinic that was delivered in clinics to 10 schools and/or communities in the Sydney and greater Sydney area.  The primary target group was school aged children in schools and communities in this area. A secondary target group included  parents and carers of the school aged children. The schools and communities were predominantly in low socio-economic areas; typically with higher than average Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander enrolments. The team collaborated with schools and delivered a half day workshop , having student move in a "round robin" system, expereicneing both basketball activities and healthy eating activities.

Results/Discussions:

 This workshop will share the initial evaluation results of the pilot and then move into interactive mode. We will role play a shortened version of the clinic and lead an active brainstoriming and planning session opn how this model could move into regional, rural and remote communities. Participants can share ideas about how we can make this clinic would work for their mob.

Conclusions/implications:

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