Dancing for health reduces risk of diabetes in children

A recent project for improving community health, presented by the University of Pennsylvania to attendees at the Talloires Network Leaders Conference, shows how service-learning projects can benefit university students as much as they do people in the community.

In 2005, academics at the university’s school of nursing decided to do an assessment of risk factors for diabetes, focusing on children living in a deprived area of Philadelphia as part of a masters course for training acute care paediatric nurses.

The project structure was three-tier – the trainee nurses would mentor secondary school students so that they worked together to evaluate the state of health of primary school children in the community.

“We wanted to engage the community as partners, expose high school students to nursing as a career and provide some hands-on problem-solving for our students,” says Terri Lipman, professor of nursing of children at the University of Pennsylvania.

Starting in 2012, 15 graduate trainee nurses educated 84 urban secondary school students and together they evaluated the health of 240 primary school children. They found that most had poor knowledge of nutrition, although possibly due to the influence of healthy eating campaigns in schools, younger children knew more than their elders.

Children not fit

Fitness tests showed that most of the children were not in good shape – as variables such as the heart recovery rate after exercise were well below average.

“This result was not associated with age, gender or even obesity, as even children who were normal weight were not fit,” says Lipman. The major conclusion was that one-third of the 240 children were at risk of developing type 2 CH diabetes, a sobering result.

Lack of exercise, caused by too much screen time but also by the lack of safe places for children to play in the neighbourhood, was identified as a big contributing factor.

So the team came up with a programme called Dance for Health. The children were encouraged to come to the school of nursing and take part in one hour of dancing per week, while the student nurses and secondary school students worked together to monitor the effect of this regular exercise on their health.

Mothers join in

“At the end of the first year, we asked the kids how they liked the dance programme,” says Lipman. “They said we loved it but we would like our mothers and grandmothers to come. So it became an inter-generational activity.”

Once the older generation got involved, the programme really took off. Lipman told of her surprise during the cold winter of 2013 when she arrived at the school to find long queues of people waiting to come and do their dance class.

There were health benefits for the people taking part – during 2013, female participants lost an average of one kilo during one month of dancing once a week as well as at home.

Students gain confidence

The programme has since featured in 16 poster presentations at conferences and won six awards. Presenting the programme has always been done by a team of university and secondary school students, helping the younger students gain in confidence.

Lipman reported that when a former participant in the programme graduated from the University of Pennsylvania recently, he wrote his college essay on what taking part in the programme had done for his career aspirations.

The nursing students benefit too from the greater insight they gain into the community. Lipman reports that some students question why, if they are preparing to work with children in a hospital environment, they need to do community work.

“Knowledge of the community is critical to adequately care for children because all children are products of their community,” she says.