Physical Activity and National Security [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Dr. Dan Bornstein

  • Dr. Bornstein is Founding Principal of DBornsteinSolutions, LLC.  

  • He is also the Military Sector Chair of the U.S. National Physical Activity Plan. 

• [1:14] Connecting physical activity and military readiness

  • “The more direct association is the fact that we've got a major recruiting problem in this country, in the fact that generally between 70 and 75% of age-eligible Americans do not meet the minimum qualifications for service in our military. There are a number of reasons for that—they could have a criminal background, they may not have completed high school—but increasingly, the reasons that they're unable or ineligible for service are, frankly, they're either too fat or too unfit.”

• [3:44] Evolution of physical inactivity as a national security issue

  • “So it is really time for us to think and act—we've done enough thinking, it's time for us to act—on the environments in which we live and work and play and commute and go to school and pray and so on. Such that those environments make the healthy choice the easy choice, the choice to be physically active, the choice to eat more healthful foods is a much easier choice to make.” 

• [7:52] Framing physical inactivity as a national security issue

  • “What is the secondhand smoke of sitting or physical inactivity? I would argue it's national security. And so if we don't do these things to increase the physical activity across our population, we really do put ourselves at risk of being less safe and secure. So individual behavior can impact the masses in this case. And so framing physical inactivity as a national security issue, hopefully will generate more interest for more people to do more things to allow more people to become and stay more physically active on a regular basis.”

• [13:08] Return on investment of physical activity 

  • “So I think in terms of return on investment as it relates to military readiness, there are some very much more proximal outcomes when we talked earlier about musculoskeletal injuries that are occurring in basic training. Well, we can see a pretty rapid return on investment by reducing the incidence of some of those musculoskeletal injuries. We can see reductions in the incidence of some of these mental health outcomes that are plaguing our service members, our veterans and our culture as a whole.”

• [19:14] Strategies to address physical inactivity as a national security issue

  • “So getting federal agencies and other entities at even state and local levels to break down those silos and to convene and talk about how physical activity is impacting them and their organizations and/or how they impact physical activity is a pretty wonderful place to start. And if we begin doing that, I believe that we will identify lots of operational efficiencies that also create wins in multiple silos, stovepipes, domains, and that we will do much better as a country if we start again, breaking down those silos, building bridges, and implementing solutions that are already there, but might need multiple different organizations or partnerships or collaborations to actually get them successfully implemented.”

• [22:42] Knowing what is important to the audience

  • “When there is a logical connection to be made, I think it is incumbent upon the physical activity and health professional to make that connection through evidence, through stories, through whatever means we have at our disposal to demonstrate to individuals that we're talking with, that we can make a meaningful impact on the outcomes that are most relevant to them. And with a proper investment, we can show a return on that investment that they can genuinely appreciate.”

• [26:19] Physical activity as a household and community issue

  • “So it's a win-win, whether you want to look at it as a public health issue or a national security issue. By investing in prevention, by allowing more people to be more physically active, by creating environments especially social environments, through their families and through their communities, we have that opportunity to provide short and long term return on investment that will pay for itself in droves in meaningful ways, forever.”

• [30:07] Call to action

  • “So I would dive in, and I would say, find the three recommendations in the National Physical Activity Plan that you think you can get the greatest traction on, and then go work to try to implement those recommendations. Because they're evidence based, the evidence is there, the roadmap is there, we just need to get on the road.”

Feeling Amazing Through Movement - Zing! [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Michele Levy

  • Michele Levy is Founder of Zing!  

  • She is also a certified fitness instructor, personal trainer, and youth exercise specialist.

• [1:18] Zing! inspiration

  • “And it's really been a wonderful thing to see kids smiling and moving their bodies, whether it's behind a computer or their school or in the park. And they're really leaned into the fact that fitness and wellness is cool. I think it's of the moment where parents are getting a Peloton and they're doing things at home. Their kids see parents exercising, they know what's good for them. They know it's important. And they're open to hearing fun ways to bring it into their lives.”

• [7:12] Physical activity and mental health

  • “And we see kids really lighting up when they get to learn how to just move and feel okay. And all of our instructors that we have, they know that we are here to create a safe space. Kids talk to them, open up to them as a safe mentor, as a friend, as a coach.”

• [10:49] Role of positive affirmations

  • “It's cool, they get it, they see that their energy shifts when they start to talk to them positively. And It really is incredible. Because you can see the difference in how they came in the room to just 10 minutes later, when they get to say I'm a rock star in unison with other people. It's almost like that feeling when you go to a group exercise class, and everyone’s in unison together...”

• [16:41] Making it fun

  • “I will say when we're teaching classes, if a child does not want to participate, I will tell them, I'm not going to force you to do this. But we do ask that you just sit on the side so I can see you and when you're ready to join back in, and almost every single time they'll join back in because they see their friends having fun.”

• [20:43] Programming ideas

  • “I actually look at what's going on in the world, like the calendar of things. So for example, we have superhero week, because this Thursday is National Superhero Day. So I keep track of all those kind of special dates and use that to help guide.”

• [24:46] Reaching at-risk children

  • “I've noticed that when we work with maybe at-risk children or in communities where they might not have certain things that they just don't even know how to stand up properly, like they're all hunching. And really teaching them that movement is a way for them to feel strong and empowered, no matter what, like that is something that I rang true, because you might not have all the resources that other people have, but you have you and you have your body and you have your mind.”

• [28:55] Meeting the needs of school communities

  • “But that's just what today's kids and schools need. They need a little bit more structure, but a lot more creative play around movement and wellness. I'm just thrilled that we get to help people. As I said, if I want to work my butt off, I want to be doing it for a purpose. And the fact that I get to see people's faces light up every single day is, is wonderful.”

Reimagining Workplace Well-being [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Dr. Jessica Grossmeier

  • Dr. Jessica Grossmeier is CEO at Jessica Grossmeier Consulting.

  • She is also Author of Reimagining Workplace Well-Being: Fostering a Culture of Purpose, Connection, and Transcendence.  

• [1:13] Responding to emerging workforce trends

  • “I started to look at the headlines that were emerging and thinking about how our employers are going to be responding to the emerging needs in our workforce. And the things that I was reading about, I felt, really held value and an answer and a response to these emerging trends of burnout and the quit rates that we were seeing emerge and mental health.”

• [2:48] The Great Resignation

  • “And when asked, the people that quit their jobs last year say I want a more flexible schedule. I want more meaning and purpose and fulfillment in my work. And they want to feel valued, respected and included by their peers. And so these are the needs that employers need to address…”

• [6:56] Evolution from a traditional approach to well-being initiatives

  • “But when it comes to expanding the dimensions of well-being, what we've left behind largely is this need to address meaning and purpose in one's work and to understand that there's a connection between one's purpose in life and their work performance, as well as their well-being.”

• [11:48] Changing culture

  • “And I think that's where a lot of corporates have fallen down on this whole culture change idea is they, they bring in an external company, and they try to outsource it and don't want to take responsibility. And it's hard work because everybody from the top executives through the middle management, directors, supervisor, managerial, it has to influence everything. Your policies, your training, who you hire, who you promote, all of these things can be built into a system that honors caring and a more humanistic approach.”

• [15:45] Employer wake-up call

  • “And so I think organizations will have an opportunity to respond to these pain points, but it might be quite traumatic. I think it might come from investors, from shareholders, from boards of directors, stepping up and applying pressure, and from consumers.  Consumers more and more are making decisions with their pocketbooks about, we're not going to support companies that are quite well known in some cases for not treating their employees well.”

• [19:26] Next generation well-being initiatives

  • “To understand if your culture, if your workplace is truly advancing human thriving, we have to understand how our employees feel about what they're experiencing. And when it comes to connection, do I feel seen, heard and valued? And if the answer is no, well, then that's influencing their well-being and it's influencing their team's well-being and performance. And it's going to influence, eventually, the reputation of the company and the ability to attract and retain employees.”

• [24:12] Well-being assessments

  • “But, you can start to infuse these ideas into whatever training you are offering or learning or professional development you're offering. And help them to understand how we treat one another is fundamentally important to how this business performs.”

• [27:43] Addressing purpose

  • “Well, I think one of the things that we've seen in the pandemic is you can try to be taking care of these different dimensions of well-being, but if you haven't addressed meaning and purpose, connection and belonging, and this sense of what helps me to feel alive in my work. If those things are being ignored, then you're leaving opportunity on the table when it comes to well-being.” 

Maintaining Muscle Mass and Strength to Support Healthy Aging [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guests, Eric Levitan and Dr. Katie Starr

  • Eric Levitan is Founder and CEO of Vivo

  • Dr. Katie Starr is Assistant Professor in Medicine at Duke University, Research Health Scientist at Durham Veterans Administration, and Scientific Advisor to Vivo

• [1:20] Vivo inspiration

  • “And the more I started looking into that, the more I started recognizing that we all lose muscle as we age and how impactful this is not just to increase fall risk, but impactful for our quality of life, impactful for making us more susceptible to the diseases of aging.”

• [3:29] Maintaining muscle mass 

  • “[A]s we are aging, that strength training component is so important, because not only does it help us maintain muscle mass, it also helps with the quality of the muscle.  It helps us reduce that fat that starts to infiltrate that muscle, so that the muscle will continue to contract like it's supposed to, allowing us to continue to do the activities that we want to do, stay independent, and really be able to have that independence that we all crave as we get older and age and want to still do the things that we love with our families, with our spouses, with our friends.”

• [5:48] Creating shared experiences 

  • “We know that, not for everybody but for most people, community and social engagement is really at the core of behavioral change. And so if we can provide this kind of underlying shared experience with other humans, even though we're remote, and that's meeting people where they are, that’s also really helpful.”  

• [9:15] Measuring success

  • “And so what the assessments allow us to do is really identify where people are coming in at, so that we can truly develop a program that fits them.  It's not a cookie cutter program. And that's the purpose of these assessments is really to try to help meet people where they're at, identify some of those barriers, identify some of those fears, so that we can really try to talk through those.” 

• [12:42] Importance of strength training

  • “This is functional movement where you are challenging yourself so that you can do activities of daily living really comfortably for the rest of your days. And so this is important stuff that we get people comfortable with. But it's not intuitive. And it's not being talked about enough.”

• [17:14] The role of fitness professionals

  • “So your relationship with a trainer is everything. And even a mediocre program in the hands of a great trainer is a fantastic experience. Whereas a great program in the hands of a mediocre or poor trainer is a terrible experience. And so we understand that the trainer is the single most important part of that relationship and what we're doing.”

• [21:07] Creating community and social engagement online

  • “And what we're doing by delivering this in an online interactive way is removing some of those barriers that people have to working out to begin with.  You don't have to get into a car, you don't have to drive to a gym, you don't have to deal with traffic or parking or an awkward experience where you don't know what you're doing in an actual fitness studio. It's not as good as being with people, but it's pretty darn close.”

• [24:18] Physical resilience and aging

  • “And so what I really try to instill in our members and any person I get to work with who is aging is the fact that we don't know when some of these stressors may arise. But what we really want to do is focus on how can we strengthen our body, get our body primed and ready for anything that we don't, we're not ready, we don't know it's coming.”

• [26:46] COVID-19 pandemic impact on vision and model

  • “We got an opportunity to really impact three or what I would consider different groups of people. First and foremost, there's people that just don't have access to do this otherwise, right? You may not live by a gym, or a boutique fitness studio, or a senior center, or any kind of community access that would facilitate a fitness experience, and how amazing to be able to get that wherever you are. The second part was people who were really intimidated by going into more of a group fitness experience.  We had the opportunity to give them a safer place that you could try this, you could try this in the comfort of your home, where it just felt a little bit more approachable. And then the third group is people that we're probably going to work out anyway. But we just made it a whole lot easier.”

Move to Learn More [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Dina Buchbinder

  • Dina Buchbinder is Founder and President at Education for Sharing.

• [1:10] Power of play

  • “[W]e humans need to play, to interact and to nurture our curiosity and to become critical thinkers and to just want to give our best to the world.”

• [3:35] Play and learning

  • “You will think that play is just something like a nice to have, but it is at the center, at the heart of how we learn and why we learn and the reason that…like in order to really engage with what is relevant today and how can we prepare our brains to learn what we will need, I think it has an intimate relation to play and to movement…”

• [8:16] Play-reflect-take action model

  • “So we use play. We translate abstract concepts, maybe like civic values or the global challenges also known as the Sustainable Development Goals from United Nations. And we translate them in a way that become a game where you're invited to to use, again, movement at many levels, your body for sure, your mind and your emotions. And the whole model is play, reflect and take action.”  

• [12:12] Engaging the community in play

  • “What would it look like to have parents and teachers playing together? Does that ever happen? It's not rocket science. It's just, like, very human, very simple, but very so not common, so not the practice. And so if these adults can get to know one another from a different perspective, but also talking about what they both care about, they can find in each other a true ally and find in each other a source of support that they didn’t think of before…” 

• [13:58] Power of reflection

  • “And I think that is the biggest gift that we can promote in our youth, but, frankly, also us adults, to have the possibility to take a moment to reflect. And I don't know how many of us do that in our day to day lives, just really learn to have a space and the discipline to have a space to reflect and to find answers or questions, which is even better.”

• [16:24] Good citizenship development

  • “So really, I think that's the most important for a relevant education today and going forward is the fact that we can integrate fully the notion of being proud of who we are and our identities, and being able to celebrate where we come from. And at the same time, be able to fully be amazed about who others are, and to also celebrate that and to want to learn about them and their cultures and their lives and and their circumstances. ”

• [20:18] Moving to learn

  • “And I think that's why all our games, whichever subject we are learning about, they have movement, because inherently that is how we learn.  It’s like, by using our bodies, our minds, our emotions, simultaneously, they're not siloed, it's not like when you use your body then you're not using your mind or vice versa. It's really a comprehensive package, if you will.”

• [23:37] Building the case for moving to learn

  • “And so I think one way of doing that is by continuing showing evidence about how that is the case, how they're better results in terms of academic achievement. If you focus on the, on the right foundations, no?, and really giving the importance to what, what is essential. It's, and sometimes it entails going back to basics.”

• [26:27] Innovation in education

  • “I believe innovation is more about things that exist, but that you put together in a way that didn't exist before.”

Evaluating ROI in Health Plan-Community Partnerships [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Paula Turrichi

  • Paula Turrichi is Chief Strategy Officer for Parkland Community Health Plan.

• [1:10] Parkland Community Health Plan

  • “[W]e assist [families] with addressing their healthcare needs, access to clinic appointments, in patient care, behavioral health. And then we also have value added services and different events that we hold in the community to support the members who have joined our health plan.”

• [2:06] Taking healthcare out into communities

  • “So many people throughout the community are serving the same types of community members that we do. So we try to get together and sort of increase the impact of our work together.”

• [4:04] Assessing community needs

  • “And so what is it that we could bring not only as a health plan, but as a health system, and then in conjunction with all of the other agencies in the community, to affect those health needs, those life expectancies, those social determinants of health? And how can we do that together to have the most impact?”

• [5:43] Partnering to connect members to services

  • “So we just, we try to partner with as many agencies as we can who can help us to connect our members and the community at large to services that exist that folks may or may not know about.”

• [8:53] Determining fit for partnering

  • “[W]e are on the receiving end of a lot of innovative ideas. And so one of the things that we try to do is determine if there's a match.”

• [11:53] Evaluating return on investment

  • “And so in some cases, we take a look at our data that we have on hand. Do we have a need for this particular tool? Is this a good fit with our membership population, the folks who we serve? Is there an economic benefit, for example? Or is there a clinical benefit? Is there a quality benefit? And we try to do some cost benefit analysis with regard to the financial situation to see if what the offer is, is truly going to pay off.”

• [14:31] Using data to drive decision making

  • “If you're trying to quantify cost avoidance from that prevention, it does take a while. And I think that's where you have to bring as much data as you can, or as much research as you can, to back up your proposal To say folks have studied this, and this is what we see in the research. This is how we can benchmark ourselves. And really, to have a persuasive argument, you need to have that background, and that backup information, to really convince folks to move forward with those long term types of proposals.”

• [15:47] Addressing whole person health 

  • “So I'm really excited to see how many folks are really taking social determinants and whole person care to heart and really incorporating that into the way we deliver care.”

• [19:33] Providing gym memberships

  • “I think that we have a long way to go in terms of incorporating movement into the services that we offer for our members.  We found that through our value added services, we had an idea, oh, well, we will offer a gym membership to our members. And so what we found was that very few of our members took advantage of it. And that was somewhat disheartening.”

• [24:36] Barriers to using gym memberships

  • “Also, during COVID, many of the gyms were closed, and so it wasn't really something that folks could use. So having those opportunities to engage in that movement, and that physical activity, in your own time and in your own space, was much more valued.”

• [26:28] Reframing exercise as movement

  • “I'm not sure that I have seen a huge difference in the way they're framed. I think that we have an opportunity as an organization to reframe that. And also to really engage with members about what they want to do or what motivates them, as opposed to, we as sort of a paternalistic organization want you to exercise because that will make you healthy.”

• [27:32] Defining a successful partnership

  • “I think that a successful partnership is one that there is a mutual relationship.  It is a partnership, it's a collaboration, and there is a shared opportunity to really impact the community.”

Achieving Lasting Changes in Healthy Eating and Regular Exercise [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Dr. Michelle Segar

  • Dr. Michelle Segar is a University of Michigan Sustainable Behavior Change Scientist and a Health Coach.  

  • Dr. Segar is also the author of the forthcoming The Joy Choice. 

• [1:19] Sustainable behavior change

  • “And The Joy Choice really is asking a different question. Instead of looking forward, It's getting us to stop dead in our tracks when a conflict arises to our exercise or healthy eating plans.  When things go awry.  Because they always do, for the most part. And so The Joy Choice is, aims at helping people understand what's truly getting in their way at those challenging decision points, and most importantly, how they can rethink it so they have a more positive frame and an easy strategy and decision tool they can implement.”

• [3:07] Immediate benefits of being physically active

  • “But also what the science really at this point I think I can say unequivocally shows for the vast majority of people that when we help people understand the immediate benefits, whether it's mood or energy level, you know, whatever it is. That converts exercise, it transforms it from something they should do into something that is relevant and compelling to help them today.”

• [7:30] A flexible approach to exercise

  • “And The Joy Choice is the perfect imperfect option that lets us do something instead of nothing. So we've got to get past the all or nothing dragon that's been getting in people's way. And I do want to say that the idea that people should become flexible is also a new message that, well, it's one I've been also talking about for decades. But the research is also starting to mount to show that flexible response and flexible thinking is much more adaptive for healthy eating, for regular exercise, including for weight loss maintenance.”

• [8:50] Habit formation

  • “So if you're a habiter and COVID really threw a wrench in your ability to do it that way that's worked for you, you have to embrace and integrate a new way. And that is one of flexibility, which the science suggests is much more likely to lead to sustainability across the board.” 

• [15:03] Movement as a gift

  • “We're teaching our kids, instilling values and beliefs that they can bring with them through their lifetime. Which is really important, not just getting them to be active in a sport, which doesn't necessarily translate at all to lifelong physical activity.  But teaching them how to think about physical activity in a way that helps them really get and internalize, wow, movement isn't something I'm supposed to do. It's actually this gift and joy that I want to do and I want to make a part of my life.”

• [17:17] Making consistent choices

  • “POP, which is the decision making tool I created to help people make the consistent choices—not perfect choices—but consistent, resilient choices that help them stay the path of sustainable change, is that when we think about things in a certain way, and when we practice them, we learn how to do it.”

• [23:30] Expanding choice

  • “I think they should have gone in the other direction and said, we only can measure above 10 minutes. And that doesn't mean that anything isn't better than nothing. But so, but now we got there, we got there finally, and the sky is the limit. And that should be the new message.”

• [25:09] Health coaching as research

  • “So, the coaching I do with people—just like you know that you do with the people that you work and the patients you work with—it is as important as any research we could do. And they both are essential to intertwine together to give us the whole picture.”

• [26:19] Health & fitness sector at a crossroads

  • “The evidence I've seen during COVID was that the industry was seriously reexamining their assumptions, their beliefs and their practices. And my hope is is that after, as we're moving out of this extreme COVID phase and reality that the industry stays as committed as they have been to doing the hard work of sustainable behavior change.”

• [30:43] Reaching the 80%

  • “Anyone who's trying to sell any product or service with that frame and mindset knows it's never about you, ever, ever, ever. It is always about your target consumer—their needs, their wants, their insecurities, and solutions that will help them solve those pain points and needs.  So that is where the industry is going to have to go if they want to actually succeed at attracting and retaining the other 80%.”

A Lifelong Commitment to Developing Resilience [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Dr. Glenda Rivoallan

  • Dr. Glenda Rivoallan is Founder of WeTalkWellbeing and Founder of Soulgenic.  

  • She is a resilience and well-being strategist.

• [1:13] Defining resilience

  • “But the most important thing about how I define resilience is the ability to not just bounce back from challenges, or adversities, or more negative things that happen to us in our life, but actually bounce forward and with the ability to thrive.”

• [1:49] Teaching resilience

  • “But I think there's something that you said there that we need to remind ourselves of, is that the joy of resilience is it can be taught. And it can also be learned, which is a really positive and transformational approach to what we do, rather than thinking that your mind is fixed, going about the idea that your mind can actually change as we grow, and help you to not just survive, but thrive.”

• [4:17] Integrating mental and physical health

  • “So we really do quite a bit of work about understanding that to actually improve your mental thinking, it's not often helpful to just do more thinking, it might be more helpful to do more being and more doing. So we look at activities that don't just work the mind, but also work the body, and vice versa. And I think you're absolutely right to see about that relationship between the two.”

• [6:04] Role of the health & fitness sector

  • “But I definitely think we've made some fantastic progress in the last few years. I think that the challenge that we still face is that we often—whether it's mental health or it's working on our resilience—that we offer interventions to either communities or employees, but they usually tackle the symptoms, and possibly not the root causes.”

• [8:30] Resilience in a corporate setting

  • “So whether it's a community or it's a corporate, for someone to be truly resilient, they have to be topping up the batteries of those pillars, to give us that holistic view of resilience that really helps someone to thrive.” 

• [11:54] COVID-19 pandemic and resilience

  • “And what we find in the research is that adverse events or big challenges in your life are the test that then wakes up the resilience skills. Where they then—when they have that sort of sleeper effect—they get switched on, and then they get tested. And I think that's such a powerful thing to think about.  Because what the pandemic did was gave us all a point of reference for a very large adversity that tested all of our resilience.”

• [15:46] Effective resilience strategies

  • “I'm a big believer of the resilience tools becoming habits. Because the more we can build healthy habits and replace the more unhealthful habits, that is going to help you moving forward in terms of how you think, how you feel, and how you behave.”

• [19:33] Reframing self-care

  • “And then you would absolutely know that in a good high performance sports car, you might have to change direction and change course.  And that's about having the flexibility to understand that things don't always go the way you want it to go. But rather than limiting your options and getting that tunnel vision, you keep that positive. And when I say positivity, I actually mean hope.  Hope is critical.”

• [23:12] Normalizing mental health 

  • “So I think it really opens people's eyes when they understand the scale of mental health in the world. And the people that suffer from poor mental health. And when we can give statistics and we can give stories, and we can give stories of people that they would relate to, I think that's really powerful.”

• [25:02] Linking mental health and physical activity

  • “Well, first of all I think that the fitness industry does have a long way to go to understand how you get someone from the sofa to the gym. Because there's so many steps between the sofa and the first gym workout. So rather than go after your new customers by way of traditional marketing, I feel that we do have corporate and social responsibility to help our societies get more active.”

• [27:01] Meeting consumers where they are

  • “And I think it's about sharing with our consumers and our customers and our community that want to engage with us that physical activity doesn't need to be starting at something that feels near on impossible. I mean, we underestimate the power of walking, because it's just so phenomenal.”

• [27:56] A lifelong commitment to developing resilience

  • “And in answer to your question, I believe to be truly resilient it's a lifelong commitment. Because we do get lazy and as you said, we're always full of good intention. And then we sometimes put something down and that is okay. But it's about understanding that that toolkit that you've worked hard to build up, you can keep adding to that backpack of skills, and then you can pull them out when you need them.”

Setting Children Up to Succeed Through Active Play - Playworks [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Jill Vialet

  • Jill Vialet is the Founder of Playworks.  

  • She is also the author of Why Play Works: Big Changes Start Small. 

• [1:08] Playworks inspiration

  • “He is, there is a real human and I will tell you the story. I think in some ways, too, Clarence is a composite in my own…Over time, he's become this sort of amalgamation of all these sort of amazing humans who just made it possible for me to play and helped me recognize the power of being outside and playing and, and being mindfully in my body over the years.”

• [3:57] Setting children up to succeed

  • “And ultimately, what you're trying to do is set these kids up to succeed, not to eliminate risk, but to help them learn how to manage and mitigate and navigate risk in a way that helps them to be able to just thrive.”

• [7:18] Managing and navigating risk

  • “So specifically with kids, we have them run around, we have them do..engage in the inherently risky behavior that is play and that has—despite being risky—survived evolution because it is so important in helping us learn how to deal with that kind of…all the sort of dangers and the metaphorical tigers and bears that are out there in the world.”

• [11:31] The value of play

  • “It is that pursuit of activities that have no apparent purpose, that luxury of being able to choose an activity and a challenge that doesn't seem to have any relevance to anything else. But in creating those kinds of spaces, that's where we learn about ourselves and where we learn about others, I think. And so to say that play is frivolous, I think is to to really dismiss the importance of creating containers for really nurturing self-awareness.”

• [17:31] Addressing sustainability 

  • “In terms of sustainability, I think, we've evolved a lot as a model at Playworks, in terms of really not only delivering the programs directly, but also really emphasizing building the capacity of the schools to continue to provide it on an ongoing basis. And we've, in the context of COVID, we have more offerings in the digital space.  And we, we just in general have tried to figure out how to do a better job of supporting people, the lowest possible cost point with remote and those kinds of things.”

• [20:33] Developing programming

  • “So with that empathic understanding of what was possible through sport and play, and then really being just incredibly lucky in terms of the people who were drawn to Playworks and Sports4Kids, and having the common sense to get out of the way and let them develop programs and not to overstep.  And we, I think, have built a really robust program that reflects a lot of people's experiences and a lot of collective good thinking.”

• [23:14] COVID-19 pandemic impact

  • “And in terms of just this moment and how important it is. What we're hearing all across the country is that the needs that they're seeing that kids just are really having a hard time after a prolonged period of not being consistently in class, or consistently in social settings. That it's, it's just hard.  And that while a lot of this stuff is innate, it does need to be fostered and reinforced and supported and there haven't been as many opportunities for kids to really learn the social skills that make for a civil society.”

Online Community Helping Older Adults Live Happy, Healthy, Connected Lives [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Lawrence Kosick

  • Lawrence Kosick is the Co-Founder and President of GetSetUp.

• [1:08] GetSetUp inspiration

  • “Why is there not a platform that focuses specifically on this demographic, that helps them learn new things, socialize and connect with others? There's one for every other demographic and age group, why not this one? And so we set out to launch GetSetUp and be that place where older adults could come learn new things, socialize and connect with others.”

• [2:15] Addressing ageism

  • “And so when you think about these two trends—fastest growing portion of the audience yet most underserved—it's sort of the perfect storm. And I think it's important we think about this when we're figuring out how to provide sort of the best service possible.”

• [4:31] Helping older adults live happy, healthy, connected lives

  • “The approach we wanted to take was to reskill and upskill older adults, then have them teach other older adults the things they wanted or needed to learn to live happy, healthy, more connected lives.”

• [7:00] Older adults as instructors

  • “They could teach them whatever it is they wanted to learn. This was actually really interesting for us because it did sort of disarm and remove the fear and concern around trying or learning something new. So in terms of getting people to try this and removing some of that friction, that actually did work in sort of helping us accelerate and onboard more older adults initially.”

• [8:46] Creating community

  • “And then we saw a really interesting statistic where, on average, a learner would make five new friends on the platform each and every month.  We realized that once you're making friends and coming back and taking classes together, you've evolved from more than just a class platform to a bit of a community.”

• [11:44] Last mile vision

  • “We just truly believe that a person's last 20 or 30 years of their life—which is a really significant amount of time—it can be their best years. But in order to do that, there needs to be a place and a community that empowers them.  And however we get there, that'll continue to be our goal.”

• [14:18] Addressing mental and physical health and well-being

  • “And health and wellness is a huge category for us, because it's anything from healthy cooking, exercising at home, managing anxiety, managing chronic illnesses, fall prevention, but a lot of fun things around mental enrichment, because there's obviously physical, and then there's mental. And we see a lot of folks really interested in sort of just staying engaged on a daily basis, and getting into a rhythm where they might come to the site and exercise in the morning. They might take something more academic midday, and they might do something fun later in the day, like play a game or something that's more entertainment related.”

• [17:35] Measuring success

  • “We think the answer is around retention and engagement, meaning how often are they coming? Are they spending lots of time? Are they booking additional classes? Are they inviting others? Are they bringing their friends, their family, their church group to the platform? And so measuring all of that, at least preliminarily, is how we think we can measure ourselves.”

• [19:43] Leveraging partners to raise awareness

  • “So we work a lot with local organizations, like the area agencies for aging, the YMCAs, a lot of the states at the Health and Human Services level—each state has a Department of Aging and they think about how to provide services to their older adults.  We were able  to raise our hand and say, we can provide this in a virtual manner with some level of scale if you'll help us promote it through your channels.”

• [21:09] COVID-19 pandemic impact

  • “And I think a lot of it is driven by the fact that this population was not using a lot of tech and products and services that were available to them because they simply weren't being provided in—how shall I say—sort of a friendly, a senior- specific, friendly manner.  What the pandemic has actually done is it has changed behavior and, in many cases, forced folks and older adults to sort of have to go and figure out how to access things virtually, that they didn't have to before.”

• [23:02] Addressing the social determinants of health

  • “And so without having sort of an appropriate way to help everybody get basic access to important information, you can't truly affect the social determinants of health, right? And to do that one of the first things we all need to think about is how do we create the ability to access whatever this important information is for all of us—older adults included—to get access to, to live happy, healthy, more connected lives.”

• [24:46] Building trusted partnerships

  • “And so we quickly looked for companies, where we could step in and say, Listen, you use to service this demographic, in a physical way, there's obviously going to be some difficulty doing that here short term, let us help you virtually, sort of maintain that connection with your users in your members in your audience.”

• [28:14] Increasing accessibility

  • “The answers will always be some level of I want to be healthier. I want to be more comfortable. I want to live at home longer. I want to communicate with my grandchildren, I want to be able to have fun and stay healthy at home. And those are all things that if we solve that first mile problem, we can solve the middle and the last mile problem.”

Focusing on Spaces, Wages, and Transportation to Build Healthy Communities [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Lisa Robinson

  • Lisa Robinson is the Director of the Office of Food Access & Healthy Communities for the City of Somerville (formerly Shape Up Somerville).  

• [1:08] Impacting energy balance in children

  • “And it was a coming together of community nonprofits and health organizations with academia and working with schools and institutions like the City of Somerville to think holistically about how to impact energy balance in children.”

• [2:15] Creating a healthier community

  • “And what was great is it attracted a lot of funding, a lot of grant funding, and with that created a lot of promotion and aligned messaging, and a top down and a grassroots approach to come around this effort of trying to create a healthier community.”

• [5:21] Systems approach

  • “Now, we recognize that there's so many root issues that can lead to obesity. And it's a complex issue. And we recognized that back then, as well. But how do we come together to really focus in on what's the main goal for attacking that—the systems that affect our health outcomes.”

• [7:08] Data-driven approach

  • “So again, thinking about other pieces of data that inform what we're sort of feeling and experiencing and perceiving. So, thinking about, how are we, people moving around the city? You know, are they relying on their cars? Are they feeling safe? What's our mileage of bike lanes?”

• [8:40] Measuring success

  • “And, during the study, we saw that the BMI trajectory for the students in the study did not rise as much as their counterparts who were not in the research intervention. We continue to look at BMI and keep an eye on that and break it down by different demographics—age, race ethnicity—to continue to target our approach. That's really important. And again, recognizing that BMI doesn't really tell the whole story, we are looking at it again from other different metrics.” 

• [10:38] Investing in green spaces

  • “So, what I think is most striking at this point, as you come into Somerville, is how we've invested in our green space, particularly our parks. And that has come with a policy measure that the City of Somerville residents opted in and voted on, which is the Community Preservation Act. It's a surcharge where that funding goes towards different sectors, one being green and open space.” 

• [13:47] Making spaces accessible

  • “So part of our data collection is to see the demographics of who's using the park and making sure that who's attending the meetings are able, you know, are reflective of who is using the park.” 

• [14:41] Public transportation access

  • “And you know, obviously, public transportation was part of the conversation early on, and they continued to be even stronger partners, recognizing that transportation is a key piece to accessing all the things that support our health.” 

• [16:10] Impact on caregivers’ behavior and weight outcomes

  • “There was a research paper that came out that did look at, actually, the behaviors and weight trajectories of the caregivers, were sort of part of that intervention and primary and secondary receivers of all of the information. And they also did change behaviors and improved their weight outcomes as well.”

• [17:05] Rebranding Shape Up Somerville

  • “And then we also felt like the name was giving off this, supporting the traditional messaging of, you know, it's an individual responsibility.  And we wanted to have it be more of a systems approach, higher level upstream approach, to addressing health outcomes and health disparities.”

• [19:11] Supporting healthy eating and active living during the COVID-19 pandemic

  • “Anywhere you looked in our little dense community, people were really out enjoying the outdoors, making it their living rooms, you know, being active.  People were more public with their activity than they ever had been. And I think that that was really positive. And not only was it helpful for our physical and mental health, it was good for continuing to keep community, you know, and keep those connections there where we were so in need of them.” 

• [22:31] Focusing on spaces, wages, and transportation

  • “So our spaces, definitely our outdoor spaces, that are free and open to everybody for whatever works for their schedule. I think if we can continue to invest in proper staff to help program and activate those spaces across the age range, that would also really be key.”

• [26:09] Advocacy

  • “It's really important to have sort of this historical, institutional knowledge, but you always need to infuse it with new energy and excitement and perspectives. So I think that that's. the more we can have our young people advocating for spaces, and they are…”

• [29:19] Collective impact approach

  • “And how are they going to tackle it from different angles and who is going to take ownership of different aspects of it in sort of the collective impact model, having a common agenda or a common goal that we all agree is the challenge we're working towards.”

Exercising for Mental Health Benefits [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Dr. Simon Rosenbaum

  • Dr. Rosenbaum is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney.  

  • He is also an exercise physiologist.  

• [1:12] Connecting mental health and exercise

  • “And just from spending hours and hours in the gym with them, and hearing stories about how quite literally, they would say that exercise keeps them alive or it… And we know that, of course, it's not the cure for everyone. But it can be such an important part of treatment.”

• [3:39] Training fitness professionals in mental health

  • “And if I think about when I started and what's happening today, and where the health and exercise and fitness industry is, I think we've come a really long way. We have programs now like Mental Health First Aid. And here in Australia, we know that all exercise professionals have to do a first aid certificate and cover things like CPR.  There is this fantastic curriculum that is Mental Health First Aid that gives people those practical skills to identify a crisis, manage it, refer, get people to help, ensure that everyone is safe.”

• [5:17] Exercise as a right

  • “It's almost nothing new.  Humans inherently know, when we move we feel good. The challenge is how do we actually support people, particularly those that are the most vulnerable, and therefore the least likely to have the luxury or the privilege to engage in exercise? I think we too often forget that it is a privilege.”

• [8:19] Training mental health professionals in exercise

  • “We do need to train exercise and fitness professionals, absolutely, in mental health. But likewise, we can't ignore the training that's needed for the mental health professionals around their knowledge of how to integrate exercise as part of their practice. We can't assume.”

• [8:52] The importance of integrating into a mental health team

  • “There’s no point doing this in isolation.  There's no point in the exercise world going ‘we need to train ourselves in mental health’ and the mental health world going ‘we need to train ourselves in exercise.’  I mean, that’s just, it makes no sense.”

• [11:43] Addressing the trust gap

  • “But what we do need to do is find a way that there's genuine connection between these services. And even if that means, instead of just asking for referrals, actually offering your service to the mental health professionals.  Train the staff, let them come and experience what your, what your services are, and what you're offering, keeping in mind that there is going to be probably a level of maybe skepticism or concern about referring their clients to your service. So it's really important that we take the time to build that relationship, as you said, and overcome that, that trust gap, as you as you put it.” 

• [15:38] The role for students

  • “Another thing that's been really successful for us is the use of students on clinical placement as a way of building capacity and staffing services.”

• [17:02] Advice for exercise physiologists

  • “So just jump in, really, and if people have the motivation and the energy and the desire, then there's going to be people around to support and help and encourage along the way.”

•  [18:41] Exercise as part of treatment and recovery

  • “It's actually saying, acknowledging the challenges, acknowledging how hard it is, acknowledging that this isn't going to be a cure, but it can be part of people's recovery.  There are ongoing challenges. And our job as that workforce is saying how do we help those people at that point in time with what they need in order to engage in some form of activity.”

• [21:07] Exercising for mental health benefits

  • “And so we've got to be really careful about that, and really focus on the idea, we're exercising for the mental health benefits, not for the aesthetics, not for our waistline.”

• [22:41] Scope of practice

  • “Yep, just thinking the exact same thing.  Yep, and know when and how to refer. Just like we would want the mental health professionals to know when and how to refer to the exercise, we need our exercise professionals to absolutely know when and how to refer and how that happens.”

• [23:57] Diversifying voices in the health and fitness industry

  • “I mean, it's nothing new, it's just the idea about meaningful engagement. But I think that, to me, is the most important thing going forward. And it's where the exercise industry is likely to learn, develop and change, is if we actually diversify our voice, diversify who we are listening to, sorry, diversify the voices that we are listening to. I think that's the most important part, and ensure that actually it's accessible and safe for everyone.”

• [27:03] Opportunity for the health and fitness industry

  • “There is an absolute opportunity to engage a different demographic and to actually ensure that that right—if we think about exercise as a right—that we actually ensure that there's opportunities for people to have that right met. So that's where I think we're dropping the ball. You know, exercise shouldn't be a privilege.” 

Changing How We Age with Digital Strength and Balance Training - Bold [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Amanda Rees

  • Amanda is Co-Founder and CEO at Bold.  

  • She is also a tai chi and yoga instructor and dancer.  

• [1:10] Bold inspiration for focusing on healthy aging and fall prevention

  • “I think caregiving is an incredible test of anyone's resilience. But, for me, the biggest shift was it made me think more about aging. And taking a long term view of how do I want to age and what are the things that I can do well before I really see myself as being older that will change the way I age for the better.”

• [2:26] Bold mission

  • “And we do this by providing personalized science-based programs to address things like balance and fall prevention, chronic condition or pain management. And then just building healthy habits and having the right resources and support to start increasing more physical activity and bringing more movement to someone's life.”

• [3:41] Investing in health

  • “If you could choose what your life would look like at 100.  And it weren’t—it looked exactly the way you wanted it to—wouldn’t you want to try and find a way to make that possible?”

• [6:44] Market opportunity

  • “And we can help accelerate getting moving. And so that's where I think we sort of timed it, unknowingly, right around when COVID began as well. And so there was also, I think, a flip of starting to feel like, I need to find something at home, and both physically and mentally I know I should find a way to keep moving.”

• [10:34] Bold instructor credentials

  • “The number one thing for me is that they have experience working with clients who are exercising for aging or older, or that have health conditions like arthritis.” 

• [12:18] Science-based

  • “And then validation is actually really important to us. We did a study remotely and online during 2020. And it was published in JMIR.  But it demonstrated greater than 45% reduction in falls and over 200% increase in physical activity.” 

• [15:03] Measuring success

  • “I mean, candidly, the number one thing is the moment someone is taking a class and the moment they sort of finish that class, however long it is.  If they're feeling better, if they're feeling more connected, healthier, more confident as a result of doing dance or doing balance training or doing strength training, I think that's a win.  And that's an immediate instant gratification.”

• [16:55] Integrating mental health

  • “You know, I think my background in yoga and sort of the yoking of mind and body.  And then also dance, I think, is a similar relationship.  It's hard to think of exercise as just for the muscles and not for the mind.”

• [19:05] Caregiving and exercise motivation

  • “This is going to help me be a better caregiver if I carve out a little bit of time to kind of just release the tension or feel strong in my body again.”

• [21:19] Resilience

  • “The other piece we think about is resilience. It's not how many times you get knocked down or stop a habit or feel like you aren't as strong as where you were. But it's how you're able to say, I've jump started before, I'm going to jump start again. And that’s the part that we want to applaud and celebrate, too, is every minute and every action is worthwhile and valuable.”

• [23:26] Partnering with healthcare

  • “But for us, that's one big step as a company in ensuring there's access so that you aren't paying out of pocket and you know that your insurance plan is as incentivized for you to be healthy, and they're willing to put their resources behind that, I think is really important.” 

• [26:08] Value proposition for insurance companies

  • “I think being digital means that we can scale, we can serve rural members that live in rural communities as well as we can in urban communities. I think that's definitely attractive for big partners.”

• [27:58] Changing how we age

  • “And so that more and more individuals truly believe for themselves deep down that they have the power to influence how they age.  They don't feel like aging is happening to them, but that it’s never too late and that there's something that they can do and they feel armed and informed about that.”

Closing the Trust and Communication Gap Between Fitness and Medical Professionals - Wellness Paradox [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Michael Stack

  • Michael is CEO/Founder of Applied Fitness Solutions.  

  • He is also the Host of the Wellness Paradox Podcast and a Clinical Instructor at the University of Michigan. 

• [1:17] Wellness Paradox

  • “[H]ealth and wellness and fitness professionals have all of the capabilities necessary to help improve public health dramatically in this country. Yet there's a trust, communication and interaction gap between those professionals and our other allied health and medical professionals.”

• [2:35] Inclusive language

  • “We use terminology that tends to not be very inclusive and approachable. We talk about things like exercise and fitness and strength. And while all those are amazing things for the 15 to 20% of the population that exercise, for the other 80 to 85% of the population that don't engage with a health and fitness center, those terms are very scary, and they're very off putting.” 

• [5:54] Operationalizing conversations about inclusion

  • “I think that's kind of the same paradigm that a lot of executives in our industry have is that like in the short term, they don't see how this can improve the bottom line, even though in the long term, certainly, if we could get the next 10 or 15% of our population active and coming to health and fitness clubs, it would dramatically improve our profitability.” 

• [9:20] Representation in inclusive environments

  • “This is where I think our industry would really benefit from having more individuals in larger bodies, because they understand the emotional challenge that it is to walk into certain environments.”

• [12:32] Mission to integrate healthcare and health & fitness

  • “For me, my mission, in its totality, is to do whatever I can possibly do to help to level up the health and fitness profession to become a part of the healthcare continuum.”

• [16:33] Coach-based approach to programming and services

  • “And for us, fundamentally, and I also feel like in general for our industry, we need a much more coach-based approach to how we engage with our clientele and with our members, rather than the traditional expert approach that's used in our industry.” 

• [18:47] Partnering with allied health professionals

  • “And just health and fitness in general, if we can focus on purely just getting people moving, getting people active and then use the dietetics professionals, the wellness coaches, all these other amazing allied health professionals to effectuate change in their scopes of practice, then we've got something.” 

• [24:27] Partnering with physical therapy

  • “And it is that very, very warm handoff that maintains the continuum of care right from, as you said, a finite number of sessions which seems to be a an ever reducing finite number of sessions at this point, and then to the health and wellness professional who, in theory, can work with that person indefinitely.”

• [26:24] Being seen as essential

  • “And so I think that that's the challenge here is to allow our industry to figure out a way to shift the perception of what we do in the minds of multiple stakeholders—politicians and lawmakers, certainly, but also people in the medical and allied health community and the population at large, who I think also views us as entertainment and a luxury rather than something that is an essential health care service.”

• [28:42] Progress on shifting the mindset

  • “But I also think because the conversation is starting to move away from just purely weight loss and esthetics to all of these other benefits, mental health in particular being one that's really been salient in a lot of the conversations in our industry as of late. I think we're starting to move towards it. By no means are we there yet.  Again, I think, look, anything in business, follow the money, and that will cause shifts in an industry or shifts in a market.”

• [30:15] Building trust

  • “And they should trust us because there are professionals in our field that are incredibly qualified, incredibly educated, and incredibly well positioned to provide a service that is not only essential, but it's a service that would make a physician’s job easier when it's done. And that's why they should trust us.”

Moving Together Outside - American Council on Exercise® [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Graham Melstrand

  • Graham is Executive Vice President, Mission and Stakeholder Engagement, at the American Council on Exercise®.

  • He is also President Elect of the Physical Activity Alliance.  

• [1:18] Mission alignment

  • “We believe that the community-based physical activity programs and interventions are critical components to ensuring access, diversity of programming options to support all of the different things that consumers are interested in, and providing the leadership and the expertise that meet the needs of all members of the communities.”

• [3:20] COVID pandemic and the Moving Together Outside campaign

  • “So many communities provided some flexibility in exchange for those closures that were imposed on them, by allowing those facilities, those exercise professionals, to take their programs and services to a risk mitigated environment in parks or other community spaces, so that they could continue to provide services that consumers still want and felt that they needed.”

• [7:02] The value for exercise professionals

  • “And this is an opportunity for us to bring our expertise, our leadership to those communities and take on kind of that higher profile as a resource for people, particularly during COVID, where there has been such a dramatically different outcome for people with good health status versus poor health status or underlying conditions.”

• [10:46] Pathway to sustainability

  • “As we move from pandemic to endemic, they're uncomfortable with the idea of going back indoors, or quite frankly, if they just enjoy the outdoor environment.  There's a growing body of evidence around the idea of green exercise and green physical activity where you're outside in nature. And in many cases people make the connection to that exercise being more palatable and better tolerated is that you have the community support, you have the professionals that are kind of coloring within the lines, if you will, by seeking out those permits and holding a current credible credential from an organization like ACE.”

• [15:18] Resources for policymakers and exercise professionals

  • “So really, I think that the real value in the directory that we're building is that it gives insight into what other communities are doing, which reduces the risk for the policymakers, because otherwise their natural inclination is to make it expensive.”

• [18:39] High visibility for exercise professionals

  • “So having programs that resonate with people, the types of activities that they're interested in engaging in, and having those scheduled and delivered by a qualified professional, it's amazing how well received that is.”

• [20:34] Success stories

  • “And then the one that really surfaced related to the Moving Together Outside campaign and the pandemic—and you were involved with the discussion with her—is St. Petersburg, where they built a comprehensive community wellness initiative, Healthy St. Pete, that includes not only a permitting program that engages professionals and facilities to deliver programs and services in parks, but also to basically sponsor and deliver at least once per month for free in parks in exchange for the community recognition so that everybody has access.”

• [25:44] Meeting people’s needs

  • “Sure, well, and to your point when you're describing what you see right outside your window, it helps people move from that pre contemplative phase, too, where they're like, ‘Well, I'm not sure what's happening in there or if I’ll like it or if it's for me or if I’ll like the other people that I'm participating with. One of the challenges, I think, with membership and fitness facilities is an individual has to make that commitment In many cases before they’ve really kind of adequately tried on the experience to see if it's for them.”

• [28:29] Call to action

  • “We're also asking individuals and organizations to help us build that directory of the community permitting resources by sharing the website address and contact information for communities that offer permits so that we can help populate that and make that more viable and robust.”

Measuring Group Exercise Program Efficacy and Motivation - Les Mills [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Bryce Hastings

  • Bryce is Head of Research for Les Mills International.

• [1:07] Researching exercise program efficacy and exercise behavior

  • “So, you know, we've been doing a lot of research over the last 10 years on efficacy of our programs, but also exercise behavior and how to make the most out of that group fitness environment.”

• [2:53] Partnering with researchers to use best practice

  • “And so I think there's a big opportunity in the industry for that, to partner with the experts, partner with the academics, partner with people who are really looking at fine details as to what we do every day and just ensure that we're using best practice every time we're turning up and taking someone through an experience.”

• [4:36] Delivering the best instructor and coaching techniques

  • “Yeah, we owe it to the people who are tuning up to our classes to know what we're doing and know what that class delivers in terms of efficacy, but also know that we are employing the best instructor techniques and coaching techniques to make sure that their experience is one that that is going to help them out.”

• [5:03] Exercise habit formation research

  • “And so currently we're looking at habit formation because that's really important for people coming onto a platform, like what can we do to help them get exercise to be sticky.  And I think in the industry, we've relied on, you know, we've looked a lot at habit execution. And execution only happens when all the previous behaviors took place.  And by previous behaviors, I mean things like preparation and instigation of the habit.”

• [7:29] Framing exercise as enjoyable

  • “And one of the other up skills that we're going to use in the intervention is getting people to think of exercise not as a chore but as a hobby, something that you would actually like to do.”

• [9:32] Focusing on the experience and enjoyment factor

  • “But it's often the experience and the enjoyment factor—as you were saying—are things that often get put to the side. And I think the industry is a little bit guilty of taking quite a clinical approach to exercise. And, you know, reducing the—or ignoring to a degree—the experience factor.”

• [12:00] Group connection as motivation

  • “[I]f people thought that they were in a group of individuals who were all there for the same purpose as them, and that was actually recognized at some part, during some part of the workout, they felt motivated by that, they felt like they actually had a connection to the group. And then they could use the group dynamic to help them achieve their goals or the objectives they walked in the room with.”

• [15:06] Translating research into action

  • “It might all look like fun and games with great music and kind of people jumping around on the stage, but there's actually a lot that goes into it. And that gives them confidence when they're up there. And, you know, we can kind of tweak their coaching styles and their coaching approach.”

• [17:14] Instructor and member retention

  • “But now when I look at people exercising in a lot of facilities, I see people who are exercising because they have to be there, not because they want to be there, but because they’ve been told by the health professional, or they've recognized something in their life that they want to improve.  And the key to retention for me is just shifting them from exercising because they have to, to exercising because they want to.”

• [19:20] Identifying as an exerciser

  • “I think it's just taking a step back and putting yourself in their shoes and thinking what is it that's going to keep them interested and allow them to take that step and identify as an exerciser. And it's very hard for someone to identify as an exerciser if it's completely foreign to them and there's no sense of enjoyment there.”

• [21:07] Building the evidence base

  • “We should be swamped with evidence of all of the things that the health and fitness industry achieve on a regular basis. But there was none. There was a couple of papers, but there's very little, and if you don't measure it, you can't discuss it, you can't change it.”

• [24:40] Measuring and testing claims

  • “ I would just say that if you're making claims on something and you want to get respect from the health industry or the medical industry, then measure it. Test it, and measure it, and then publish. And publish in journals where people have looked at your methods and checked that everything that you're claiming is well based and has good foundation.”

• [27:22] Researchers who are bridging the gap

  • “And so, we've got plenty of people in the industry who are research focused. And they understand both camps. They understand what it takes to publish robust and well founded research. And they also understand the industry.”

Implementing Physical Activity Screening and Referral in Primary Care - Exercise is Medicine® [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Dr. Sarah Linke

  • Dr. Linke is Associate Clinical Professor and Interim Assistant Dean for Community Partnerships within the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science (HWSPH) and Family Medicine at UC San Diego.

  • She has a Career Development Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) to implement and evaluate the Exercise is Medicine (EIM) program at UC San Diego Health.

• [1:28] Exercise as a prevention tool

  • “I had some really great training in using exercise as a treatment or even sometimes as a prevention tool, having these randomized controlled trials using exercise to treat a variety of conditions. But I was still feeling a little dissatisfied with the lack of kind of a global outlook on this, and how do we reach everyone, how do we make exercise part of everybody's life to use as a prevention tool? Why, why does it have to be that you have to have had a health problem, a health scare, to be told about this?”

• [6:19] Training physicians in motivational interviewing

  • “[A] lot of it is trying to train the physicians how to use motivational interviewing and how to do brief conversations with the patients that they're seeing about exercise.  Asking them questions, not using such a directive approach that they're often trained to do in medical school.  And really engaging the patients and helping them to lead themselves to the solution that they want to exercise because it's a, an empowering choice for them to make for their own health, not because their doctor told them they needed to do that.” 

• [11:34] Training physicians in framing exercise as relevant

  • “A lot of times we get stuck in healthcare talking to [patients] about how they can prevent cardiovascular disease in 30 years. Well, that's not relevant to them today. There's always tomorrow to exercise to prevent that from happening in 30 years. But how do we focus, how do we train them to focus on those immediate rewards that they can get? Which would be more energy, improved mood, decreased anxiety, decreased stress, all of these things that happen immediately, that would keep people exercising, and then in the long run would also prevent disease.”

• [16:26] Warm handoff to health coaches

  • “And so one of those things is asking patients in the PAVS—embedded in the PAVS—is, would you like to speak with a health coach about exercise? If they say yes, automatically—the physician doesn't even have to sign an order, nothing has to happen—we automatically get a referral for that patient. And now it's in our health coaches’ hands.”

• [21:05] Addressing the trust gap with community-based health & fitness professionals

  • “And that is definitely something, I know that that ACSM and EIM continue to talk about is that missing link of referring people out to community fitness professionals who can really take that next step with, with patients and that, that barrier has been known for a long time and no one's really solved it.  And I think that you’re identifying one of the main reasons why, in addition to, again, reimbursement, that I think that trust is crucial.”

• [22:40] Implementation science

  • “So really looking at those measures that are sustainable, as well, so that we can continue to evaluate it and adapt it along the way. So it's really a long term practice of making an intervention stick within any given setting.”

• [25:42] Providing the best patient care

  • “That's definitely been a challenge of mine is to make sure that they realize that is my ultimate goal as well. It's our shared ultimate goal. It's not to gather the best data or do the best research so that we have the best paper, but it's really to provide the best patient care to patients.”

• [27:42] Technology as a facilitator for physician exercise referrals 

  • “So we're really building systems in our, in our EMR to reduce clicks, reduce burden, in that way, allowing our providers to—we always talk about them practicing at the top of their license—to be able to spend their time focusing on this discussions rather than all of the documentation that goes along with it.”

Encouraging People of All Ages to Play Actively - Let’s Play America [Podcast Series]

• [:57] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Pat Rumbaugh

  • Pat is Executive Director of Let’s Play America. 

  • Pat is known as “The Play Lady” for her work encouraging people of all ages to give themselves time to play daily. 

• [1:18] Play as essential for people of all ages

  • “It's going to help us relieve stress, it's going to help us feel better about ourselves. If it's social play with others, that's so important. It’s just an overall positive way to help ourselves by playing.”

• [2:02] Addressing the perception of play as frivolous

  • “And so play is...is really something that we need to understand the importance of it and how it will benefit way more than take away from the academics.”

• [3:57] Active play in the classroom

  • “[W]e need to get up and move. Our bodies are meant to move and be physical. And that's what happened for years before all technology kicked in and we began just sitting and doing way less movement.”

• [5:15] Play as a learned and natural skill

  • “And that, that's what play brings to us. It brings, it makes us feel good about ourselves, it makes our bodies stronger.” 

• [7:03] Raising awareness of the benefits of play

  • “Well, I, I think it starts from the knowledgeable folks out there to go to their administrators, teachers, PTA, and say, can you share this with the newsletter? Could we bring in speakers that would talk to us about the importance of play and why our children need it?”

• [9:23] Play advocacy 

  • “Absolutely. A play advocate models playful behavior.”

• [11:57] Playful communities

  • “I really believe that if a group, that community, wants to put playful on the front burner, it's going to make a positive difference. You're going to have fun.”

• [13:09] Planning a play day

  • “And we had to apply with an application. give all our information, and we had to commit to planning a play day. And and you know, it was the best thing that could have happened to us because it gave us a goal.” 

• [14:12] The Play Lady

  • “And he said, Play Lady, you know what I want you to do? Keep doing what you're doing. So, how many years since 2009, I've been known as the Play Lady. And I love that name. It's, it's easy for people to remember.”

• [15:25] Play advocacy tips

  • “But the other thing that you can do is you can go to the people in charge in your community, your recreation director, your city council, your mayor, business leaders and say, can you support this, can you help us?”

• [18:04] Access to play opportunities 

  • “I'm so much for trying to find the funding, whether it be grants or from the city or individuals or businesses, however I can do it, we can do it. It's so important that play opportunities are offered to everybody.”

• [20:17] Play mentors

  • “My dream is to have leaders in all the activities and then they mentor younger as they get older, and they build their community service. They are empowered by play and they empower others.”

• [22:30] Play in the workplace

  • “Let me tell you, anywhere you live, you work, there should be play time. And I think more, more places of work that think about giving their workers. their employees, breaks and opportunities to play, they're going to want to stay.”

• [23:27] Reengineering play back into our lives

  • “You want to look at your calendar and, and you really want to put play on the front burner. Just like you may go to your place of worship on Sunday, you should also give yourself on Sunday some play time.”

• [26:11] COVID-19 pandemic and play

  • “And when it comes to play, we need to think of any way that it's going to help our children and adults. Because everybody has been through so much. It's been a really crazy time.  And play, play is what's going to save us, Amy.  Give it to yourself as ‘I’m giving myself the gift of play’.”

• [27:35] Let’s Play Outside

  • “Playing is so crucial and important to children's lives, that will lead to, hopefully, adults playing for the rest of their life.”

• [29:47] Tips

  • “Let them play on their own as early as possible. Let them be outside as much as possible. And most importantly, parents, educators, model playful behavior.”

Benefits of Youth Sports for Kids, Communities, and Country - NCYS[Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Wayne Moss

  • Wayne is the Executive Director at the National Council of Youth Sports. 

  • Wayne has a long history of working on youth sports, fitness and recreation. 

• [1:18] Youth sports as essential

  • “I see it as three really important reasons why it's important. You know, first of all, there are benefits to young people. And we can talk about the benefits shortly.  Secondly, there are benefits to community, like it builds community. Youth sports and communities is like apple pie. And then the third thing is it really has benefits for our national interest in a lot of ways.” 

• [2:11] Benefits of youth sports for kids

  • “And what's funny is...adults think about exercise, being active through exercise by and large,  Young people just like to go out and play. And so sports is an easy way to really engage young people in that respect.”

• [4:11] Impact of COVID on the youth sports sector

  • “The youth sports sector has been extraordinarily impacted.  And so, many organizations that were operating and, operating on a shoestring when COVID came in, they shuttered, shut down. And, oftentimes these are organizations that were in the communities that really, that young people needed it most.  So young people have been disproportionately impacted in those particular communities.”

• [6:27] Youth sports and mental health

  • “So if we know that youth sport provides protective factors around mental health and around risky behavior—whether we're talking about premature sex or drugs or alcohol—if we know this to be a fact—and we do—we collectively need to be framing youth sports up in that way so that the public in general gets that this is not just fun and games.”

• [8:49] Benefits of youth sports over a lifetime

  • “But all of these benefits really transfer over the course of a lifetime.  And that’s why I think that it is really important for all young people to be involved in sport and really to find whatever it is, is their particular interest, the thing that they like to do, and the thing that they can continue to do over the course of a lifetime. And they should be engaged in a lot of things, experiment with lots of different sports, just to see what's of, what's of interest to them.”

• [10:53] Youth sports and academic performance

  • “If we think about just the nature of sport, what happens physiologically in terms of the body, blood flow to the brain and all of those kind of things.  We know that that also helps from a cognitive kind of development perspective.  And so as young people are more active, they're in a position to do better in school.”

• [13:37] Access to youth sports for girls

  • “And so I think we need to be sensitive to those things and ensure that when we're developing programs, we're also developing those programs that allow for young girls to feel comfortable, to feel welcome, to want to participate.”

• [16:48] Diversity in leadership

  • “[A]s we think about diversity, with diverse thinking, with diverse engagement, you then bring those kinds of issue to the table where a man may not necessarily be thinking about that, because that's just not our or his experience. A woman may bring that kind of experience.”

• [19:25] Access to youth sports for underserved communities

  • “So that's one of the things that we need to do is to provide support from brands that have a vested interest in youth sports. If they're able to provide funding, we're able to get that to the local level, and then to provide wraparound services.” 

• [23:35] Benefits of youth sports for country

  • “We know that there are many young people for whom they're not physically fit enough to join the military. And so that then has national security implications in terms of the pool of people that are eligible to serve.” 

• [25:08] National Youth Sports Day

  • “One of the things that we're doing, we're putting together National Youth Sports Day, which is going to take place on November the 13th, that's a Saturday. And what we're doing is we're calling on all organizations to really do what they do best, which is to serve young people, to have fun and that kind of thing. But it really is a platform for us to all begin to talk about the importance and the benefits of youth sports.”

• [28:05] Calls to action

  • “I think at the end of the day, it really just comes back to being an advocate for, for young people, for their experience, and then looking to see how we can support them in a way that's authentic for each of us.”

Using Storytelling to Make Physical Activity Research Accessible to the Public [Podcast Series]

• [:56] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Gretchen Reynolds

  • Gretchen Reynolds is the Phys Ed Columnist for the New York Times.  

  • She is also the author of the book, The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, and Live Longer.

• [1:20] Writing about exercise, exercise science, and physical activity

  • “And it certainly hadn't covered the science of fitness and physical activity and what it means to be fit, and what scientists were learning about how our bodies really work and how we can help them to work better. And I think one of the things that I learned and that the New York Times editors learned was that there was just a boundless well of enthusiasm for that information among our readers.”

• [5:01] Choosing studies to write about

  • “[T]here are a couple of topics that I always know will interest Times readers and interest me.  And that includes issues like exercise and the brain.  That's of enormous interest to people, because there's so little that can be done medically to protect our brains, to allow us to think and remember as we get older. And it does look like exercise can play a role in that and the science is really interesting. Exercise and weight is invariably of interest, even if the studies don't show that exercise is effective for weight. I'm always looking for studies that can advance our understanding of what exercise does and doesn't do.”

• [9:14] Honing the talent to write about exercise science

  • “So the goal is to not dumb down the science because I don't think...People out there are not dumb, they want to understand, again, how their bodies work. So explain the science in the simplest possible terms without losing the important aspects of what made the study interesting.”

• [12:37] Storytelling about physical activity and exercise science

  • “But figuring out how this topic, how this—the whole arena of physical activity— how important it is for our lives, that is, there are stories in all of that and that is what sticks to people. That's how they can remember this information and figure out how to apply it to their lives. So, so yes, I think of myself as a storyteller whose subject matter happens to be physical activity and exercise science.”

• [15:45] Physical activity and enjoyment

  • “I think both the evidence and real life anecdotal evidence are pretty clear that what does get people to get up and move is one to remind them it will make them feel better, they will enjoy it.”

• [18:48] Physical activity and longer, healthier lives

  • “And the more we understand that, I think and hope the more people will want to just move, just to improve their chances of having a longer, healthier life, and the chances that their children will have a longer and healthier life.”

• [23:35] Physical activity and accessibility

  • “But the science and the most recent guidelines make it quite clear that movement is movement, your body really doesn't care how you do it. And if we can remind people that just any kind of activity that is not sitting in your chair and staring at a screen is going to be good for your body. And if people understand that, I think they become, they begin to feel more capable of being active because they already are.”

• [27:33] Individual response to exercise

  • “Our bodies will respond—and the science is very clear—they will respond to exercise, but they may respond differently than your spouse or training partner does. So experiment until you find something you like doing that is just fun.”