Join the Center for Diabetes Translation Research – Solutions to Diabetes in Black Americans Core for a webinar on Tuesday, February 23rd, at 1 PM EST

Presenter Bio: Dr. Rebecca Hasson is an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan. For the past 8 years, Rebecca has focused on developing and implementing physical activity interventions in schools, especially for low-income and ethnic minority pediatric populations. As director of the Interrupting Prolonged sitting with ACTivity (InPACT) program, her team has rigorously tested the feasibility of implementing InPACT activity breaks in classroom settings and tailored InPACT to enhance implementation fidelity and flexibility in low-resource schools. Currently, her team is working with Saginaw Intermediate School District (ISD) to enhance InPACT sustainability by strengthening district wellness policies, creating train-the-trainer programs and ISD implementation guides. Rebecca enjoys using her expertise in pediatric physical activity, implementation science, and health equity research to improve the health and well-being of Michigan children and their families.

Webinar Description: Despite increased funding allocated for health and physical education (PE) programs through Every Student Succeeds Act, disparities in school-based physical activity programming persist with low-resource schools less likely to offer recess, have a certified PE teacher, or provide after-school sports programming, compared to higher-resource schools. Classroom-based physical activity interventions hold great potential for reducing physical activity disparities at school by providing children with 19 minutes of in-class activity every day (approximately two-thirds of the school-based recommendation of 30 minutes). Yet, low rates of treatment fidelity (the extent to which an intervention is delivered as conceived and planned) have been observed in low-resource schools, resulting in children accumulating less than 5 minutes of daily in-class activity. There is a critical need to develop classroom-based physical activity interventions that are tailored to context, to maximize fidelity and motivate behavior change in students toward increased activity levels. In the absence of such tailored programs, classroom-based interventions have the potential to perpetuate existing disparities in physical activity participation among low-income children. Today’s webinar will highlight the successes of a school-based physical activity program tailored for implementation in low-resource settings and how this same program was adapted for dissemination in the home environment during the COVID-19 pandemic.