During the height of the pandemic we learned deaths from COVID-19 are highly correlated with obesity. Sadly children have not been spared - children with COVID-19 who are obese are hospitalized at three times the rate compared to their normal weight peers.
To best help kids with autism maintain healthy rates of physical activity, interventions should be targeted during the ages of 9 to 13, when kids show the biggest drop in active time.
January 27, 2019
Fullbright semi-finalist
Undergraduate research student, Greg Heinonen, has been recommended as a semi-finalist in the Fulbright U.S. Student program. "The project that I've proposed will be the evaluation of a preventative intervention to promote the mental health and well-being of newly arrived refugees to Denmark." If funded, Greg's aim will be to examine factors of Danish school and welfare systems that promote or inhibit the success of the intervention.
Kathleen McCarty, a kinesiology doctoral student in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences, has been inducted into the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars program.
Health promotion and health behavior and Honors College senior Gregory Heinonen's poster titled, "Examining the relationship between parent and child health in young children with developmental disabilities," co-authored by kinesiology Professor Megan MacDonald, was given the American Public Health Association (APHA) 2018 Student Poster Session Award. Congratulations, Greg!
They’re said to be man’s best friend and now, four-legged friends of families with a developmentally disabled child are being trained to take on a new, important role. Dogs who complete the Do as I Do (DAID) project become imitation trainers for their human children with the goal of improving physical activity and social well-being in the child.
Children with autism are often clumsy, physically awkward or uncoordinated. This understudied and nearly ubiquitous feature has researchers contemplating a new idea: Could motor problems be one source of autism’s social difficulties?
Megan MacDonald, Ph.D was involved in a study that found that preschoolers with better fine and gross motor skill development will have improved social behavior and executive function. Megan joins us today to talk about the study, it's findings, and the implications for teachers.