Swim to the Top (S3T)
Presentation Format
Poster
Intended Audience
All Audiences
Presentation Description
Background: Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death in children worldwide. Obesity is also a worldwide epidemic wreaking havoc on younger populations. African American youth are overrepresented in the literature on obesity and fatal drownings when compared with other racial groups in the United States. To reduce the unintentional fatal drowning and childhood obesity disparity between African American youth and other racial youth groups , a multicomponent summer program was designed for underserved African American youth.
Methods: For four weeks, children participated in a three-hour, community-based multicomponent intervention to improve at-risk youth’s swimming ability, physical fitness, and life skills. Each child was provided a nutritious breakfast snack during the first 30 minutes of each day, which supplemented the nutrition curriculum, a subcomponent of life skills portion of the program. The participants were divided into three age groups, and were provided age- and skill-appropriate instruction in the three major components.
Results: Approximately 145 youth aged 4-14 participated in the second year summer program. The majority of the participants were African American, received free or reduced lunch during the previous academic year, and lived in a two-parent household or with a single mother. Nearly half were previous participants in the program.
Conclusions: Community-based participatory research, a form of collective engagement research, could potentially eliminate racial disparities in health. Furthermore, summer programs that implement culturally relevant programs based on at-risk youth’s needs have the potential to ameliorate health outcomes for African American youth.
Location
Embassy Suites Hotel
Start Date
4-13-2016 5:00 PM
End Date
4-13-2016 7:00 PM
Recommended Citation
Gardner, Antonio; Mitchell, Jermaine; Craddock, Douglas Jr; Agomo, Carol; and Wahl, Zach, "Swim to the Top (S3T)" (2016). Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016. 60.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gss/2016/2016/60
Swim to the Top (S3T)
Embassy Suites Hotel
Background: Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death in children worldwide. Obesity is also a worldwide epidemic wreaking havoc on younger populations. African American youth are overrepresented in the literature on obesity and fatal drownings when compared with other racial groups in the United States. To reduce the unintentional fatal drowning and childhood obesity disparity between African American youth and other racial youth groups , a multicomponent summer program was designed for underserved African American youth.
Methods: For four weeks, children participated in a three-hour, community-based multicomponent intervention to improve at-risk youth’s swimming ability, physical fitness, and life skills. Each child was provided a nutritious breakfast snack during the first 30 minutes of each day, which supplemented the nutrition curriculum, a subcomponent of life skills portion of the program. The participants were divided into three age groups, and were provided age- and skill-appropriate instruction in the three major components.
Results: Approximately 145 youth aged 4-14 participated in the second year summer program. The majority of the participants were African American, received free or reduced lunch during the previous academic year, and lived in a two-parent household or with a single mother. Nearly half were previous participants in the program.
Conclusions: Community-based participatory research, a form of collective engagement research, could potentially eliminate racial disparities in health. Furthermore, summer programs that implement culturally relevant programs based on at-risk youth’s needs have the potential to ameliorate health outcomes for African American youth.
Program Abstract
African American youth are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic and unintentional injury due to fatal drownings. To abate the likelihood of the youth contributing to both epidemics, a culturally tailored multi-component summer program was designed for under-served African American youth in a southeastern urban area.