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An Ounce of Prevention, A Pound of Cure
HPER plays key role in IU’s life sciences strategy
“Indiana University should engage in research and education … that will help residents of the state of Indiana to lead healthier, better, and longer lives. The university should continue to expand efforts to inform residents of the state of Indiana about the importance of exercise and proper nutrition. The university should continue to expand efforts within the state of Indiana to reduce the prevalence of smoking, excessive use of alcohol and controlled substances, and risky sexual activities.”
—Goal 7 of the Indiana University Life Sciences Strategic Plan
When people think about Indiana University’s relationship to the life sciences, the School of HPER might not be the first school that comes to mind.
Things changed in early 2006, when Dean David Gallahue and other HPER officials alternately met with IU President Adam Herbert, IU Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Michael McRobbie, and Craig Brater, IU vice president for life sciences and dean of the IU School of Medicine. The meetings focused on HPER’s contributions to the university’s life sciences initiative.
“Life sciences are basically the science of humanity, and that’s what we deal with entirely,” says Gallahue. “So now here we are, going from the point where people didn’t connect HPER with the life sciences, to working with the top three administrators of the university. This is exciting stuff.”
Fostering wellness
Over the summer, faculty and administrators on the School of HPER Life Sciences Initiative Taskforce brainstormed about how best to articulate and enhance HPER’s role in the life sciences. The taskforce is composed of representatives selected from each department and division, along with chairpersons, and a dean’s group.
Executive Associate Dean Jerry Wilkerson, who acts as facilitator for the Life Sciences Initiative Taskforce, says the committee will culminate its brainstorming sessions with a proposal that focuses on HPER’s past, present, and future involvement with the life sciences. Wilkerson says the committee has already been able to distill one of HPER’s principal contributions to the life sciences: behavior modification.
“We’re not necessarily the ones who treat disease, although we are doing work in health sciences that deal with different populations with diseases like diabetes”, says Wilkerson. “We try to determine behavior modifications to prevent long-term health issues”.
“There’s not a teenager on the street today who doesn’t know smoking is bad for them, but that doesn’t seem to stop them. It takes more than knowledge. It takes a behavioral change, and that’s what we’re about. That will save a tremendous amount of money for the state of Indiana in the future because of the rising health costs that are affecting the economy.”
“The school brings a variety of perspectives to understanding health and wellness,” says Bryan McCormick, a taskforce representative from the school’s Academic Council and an associate professor of recreation, park, and tourism studies. “Most of us feel that the school has been involved in the life sciences for some time. The taskforce is working to identify ways to ensure that we’re recognized by the campus and university community for that contribution.”
As part of the Life Sciences Initiative, President Herbert has asked HPER to create a plan for a university-wide health and wellness program to be implemented in Bloomington. The school has also proposed a required health and wellness course for incoming freshmen.
Kathy Bayless, director of the Division of Recreational Sports and assistant dean of HPER, says the school has always had a role in the prevention side of the life sciences.
Bayless, Associate Dean Dave Koceja, and Chris Arvin, director of fitness and wellness in the Division of Recreational Sports, created a proposal for the faculty/staff wellness plan. It will function as a pilot program and will unfold over the next five to ten years. Throughout the year, two groups of faculty and staff will be observed: one will make a commitment to certain kinds of required activity, while the other will function as a control group, enabling the university to analyze the program’s effectiveness.
The first year of the faculty/staff wellness plan will also be an opportunity to form partnerships between HPER and other schools on campus, which Bayless hopes will include the School of Nursing, the Physical Plant, IMU Food Services, and Residential Programs and Services.
“The possibilities are extraordinary,” Bayless says. “One of the phrases those of us at the table are fond of saying is, ‘The beauty of wellness is its inclusivity. The challenge of wellness is its inclusivity.’ That means there are a heck of a lot of people, interests, and goals to try to hone in a shared fashion.”
Real-world impact
From studies of human development to learning how to lead hikers through the woods, Dean Gallahue says HPER’s role in the life sciences as it relates to mental and physical health is immediately relevant. Indiana State Health Commissioner Judy Monroe gave an endowed lecture at HPER this year, a partnership through which HPER can positively affect the lives of Hoosiers throughout Indiana. “That has a tremendous economic impact on the state,” says Gallahue. “We don’t just look at the life sciences from a basic research standpoint, but we take basic research and make that next application.”
Last year, HPER researchers looked into minimizing the presence of sugar-sweetened soft drinks in school vending machines. Through the grassroots activity of HPER and other national and local organizations, Bloomington schools are partnering with companies such as Coca-Cola to change the contents of school vending machines to include bottled water and juice, with limited soda options in high schools and no soda in elementary schools.
HPER was also recently hired to create a health and wellness plan for CSX Corporation’s 35,000 employees, many of whom suffer from sleep apnea. CSX provides rail, intermodal, and rail-to-truck services and is the largest railroad in the eastern United States.
HPER scientists, both in the field and in HPER’s Exercise Physiology, Biochemistry, and Motor Control Labs, seek answers to questions about the human body, addressing issues such as balance in the elderly, prevention of childhood obesity, and increasing safety for divers.
HPER researchers are even devising a system for how to process grief. Kathy Gilbert, an associate professor of applied health science, represents the Academic Council on the Life Sciences Initiative Taskforce. Her studies on death, dying, and bereavement are increasing awareness of the grieving process when someone loses a loved one or unborn child.
“If, socially, we have structures that are unsupportive of healthy grief, it can lead to shortened life span, increased illness, and depression,” says Gilbert. “If you have someone whose response to loss is to increase their consumption of alcohol and tobacco, that’s not a healthy lifestyle, but that’s a very common response, particularly among men. Most of what we do in HPER that relates to the Life Sciences Initiative has to do with behavior and the decision-making process behind the behavior.”
Quality of life
As part of its Life Sciences Initiative, HPER is proposing a new course tentatively titled “Bloomington Quality of Life (BQOL): A Campus and Community Working Together to Improve Quality of Life and Productivity.” The course would be one of several health and wellness course options required of all incoming freshmen as part of an effort to increase the health, productivity, and quality of life of students, staff, faculty, and community members.
Wilkerson says the course would be based on the Living Well course that has been in existence for four years, which has themes of wellness relative to spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectual, social, environmental, and occupational well-being. Each student acts as a mentor to someone in the class while also being mentored. Students keep a “feelings” journal, and guest speakers talk about subjects ranging from procrastination to eating disorders.
Lloyd Kolbe is a professor of Applied Health Science and serves on the dean’s group of HPER’s Life Sciences Initiative. Kolbe—who spent 20 years working in public health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) before joining the faculty at HPER three years ago—says President Herbert and Interim Provost McRobbie have been visionary in focusing on the life sciences.
Kolbe cites Bloomington’s 2005 law prohibiting smoking indoors in public and workplaces (and outdoors within 30 feet of entrances, exits, open windows, and ventilation intakes of public places and workplaces) as an example of how public health decisions can make a widespread difference in people’s lives.
“This has an enormous environmental effect in terms of secondhand smoke,” says Kolbe. “It also made a statement to impressionable young people that smoking is such a serious problem, it’s prohibited in public places. That’s one example of how changing the environment can do far more than just nagging people not to smoke.”
HPER initiatives include working to make fresh, healthful foods available to low-income people to help prevent obesity, and offering a variety of opportunities for physical activity through HPER’s Recreational Sports program, which Kolbe and others have identified as “arguably the best in the country.”
In the near future, Kolbe says, virtually everyone interested in the advancement and perservation of our society will have to work together to develop a public health system, a concept that has been echoed by numerous public health documents from the World Health Organization, the CDC, and others.
“The driving engine of that can be the university, because it has the schools that are training the future leaders and have enormous impact on health and quality of life,” Kolbe says.
Purpose and meaning
The essence of what HPER does, says Dean Gallahue, is to bring purpose and meaning to people’s lives so they will engage in healthy behaviors—not just because they know it’s good for them, but because it means something to them personally. “Most people don’t stop smoking because ‘I’m going to die if I keep smoking.’ No, they stop because ‘My breath stinks and she doesn’t want to kiss me,’ or ‘Cigarettes cost $3 a pack and I don’t have enough cash to invest in this habit,” he says.
By participating in the Life Sciences Initiative, HPER can promote the concept of healthful lifestyles in a way that’s specifically targeted to the Bloomington campus, bringing this “purpose and meaning” to people on an individual level.
Wilkerson says the first step to improving any health issue is improving nutrition and exercise habits. “That’s what we’re about—exercise, nutrition, healthy habits. We probably are tackling the hardest of all problems: changing human behavior,” she says. “The Life Sciences Initiative Taskforce has come to the realization that there are lots of people designing drugs, designing equipment, developing all of these things, but unless we can get people to utilize them, their quality of life will be less than adequate. We’re looking at not only living longer, but at quality of life and enjoying living.”
America’s health care situation is “catastrophic,” says Wilkerson. “We provide an opportunity for research that changes people’s behavior relative to healthy lifestyle habits. We’re not just treating a malady that already exists.
“I think we’re just stepping up and saying ‘this is who we are,’” she says. “We’ve been part of the life sciences from the beginning.”
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