As I take a look at the family schedule for the week, most times is looks like the game Tetris with all white space filled with different colours for work, home, picking up here and dropping off there. Due to the advances of technology, much of the craziness that I see before me gets entered automatically from various teams and coaches. As an adult and parent with three children the schedule is busy sometimes crazy busy. Fortunately, due to my mastermind wife (a carpool champion), we have not need to clone ourselves in order be several places at the same time.
Last month, I wrote about Richard Louv’s Nature Deficit Disorder. In order to support this work, together with my colleagues at the University of Alberta and many community partners, we are starting the CHANGE Adventure Camp. Partnering with Metabolic Syndrome Canada, a charitable organization who mission is to improve the long-term health of Canadians through effective diet and exercise lifestyle interventions, The CHANGE Adventure Camp will work to support Alberta’s families especially those at higher risk.
A few years ago, I had the good fortune to be connected with Dr. Khursheed Jeejeebhoy, a senior nutrition researcher from Toronto. He introduced me to the CHANGE idea. “CHANGE” stands for Canadian Health Advanced by Nutrition and Graded Exercise. CHANGE was a collaboration of researchers from across Canada who were working on a protocol to support lifestyle intervention in the primary care setting. As a family doctor with an interest in health promotion, I was very happy to get involved and contribute to the project.
A couple months ago I was asked by a colleague to write an editorial on electronic physical activity trackers. We had recently began a long trip and wanted to see if these physical activity tracking devices could work for our children. A year earlier, I started a project with some of my patients using electronic physical activity (PA) trackers. While I used Fitbit activity trackers, other companies have developed electronic PA trackers, including: Garmin, Jawbone, Nike.