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Group Information
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| Group Title: | |
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| Overview & Vision: |
According to the Healthy People 2020 Midcourse Review (2016), only 21.3% of American adults meet the minimum physical activity (PA) guideline recommendations of 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity per week. The vision of this action group is to become an advocate for prevention and wellness in health care. This would involve a cultural shift from a reactive intervention based system to a proactive prevention based system. This shift would prioritize maintaining an individual's independence and quality of life across the lifespan through minimizing sedentary activities and optimizing physical activity. |
| Leaders: |
I envision a multi-disciplinary collective of prevention and wellness advocates addressing barriers to compliance with wellness initiatives within their individual places of practice as well as implementing community based initiatives.
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| Rationale: |
Nearly 80% of Americans do not meet standards established in Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. This results in obesity, hypertension, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease among others. Poor control of these modifiable risk factors of chronic disease impact patient independence and quality of life while also concurrently created a public health epidemic. Physical therapists and other health care providers are well positioned to address these issues, but underutilized due to a variety of factors within the current system.
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| Goals and Objectives: |
Throughout the course of this fellowship, I plan to lay the groundwork to launch a wellness special interest group (SIG) within the Pennsylvania Physical Therapy Association (PPTA). This would establish Pennsylvania as a leader within this advocacy effort as there is only one other state at this time with a wellness special interest group. According to state by-laws, there needs to be 75 signatures representing members from each of the seven districts in the state for the SIG to be recognized. The objective would then be to launch the wellness SIG of the PPTA by the first quarter of 2018.
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| Results to Date: |
Initial contacts have been made and well received with PPTA leadership and local wellness activists. I have been approved to gauge interest in the SIG at the fall conference of the PPTA held the weekend of October 28th, 29th and 30th, 2017.
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| Date: | |