July 21, 1999
Contact: Jody Oesterreicher
(312) 996-8277
[email protected]
UIC OPENS FIRST NATIONAL CENTER TO PROMOTE FITNESS
AMONG PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES
The University of Illinois at Chicago department of disability and human development has received a $3-million grant to help ensure that people with disabilities are included in the national effort to promote health and prevent disease by increasing physical activity.
The four-year grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research will be used to create and operate a National Center on Physical Activity and Disability at UIC. The center will gather and evaluate scientific literature on physical activity and the full-range of disability: physical, sensory and mental. The center also will serve as a resource for anyone seeking information about disability and physical activity and fitness.
"Despite the consensus concerning the health benefits of physical activity and fitness, a large segment of the population has received scant attention: persons with disabilities," said David Braddock, principal investigator and head of the UIC department of disability and human development. "What's worse is that people with disabilities are likely to be at greater risk than the general population of developing secondary health conditions due to sedentary lifestyles."
Braddock said that a major obstacle to creating specific exercise guidelines for persons with disabilities is the lack of scientific literature on this topic. A second major barrier, he said, is that many health professionals do not associate such ideas as wellness, exercise and health promotion with persons who have disabilities.
"This center is something that my colleagues and I have been fighting for for many years. It is the opening of a great new chapter in improving the lives of people with disabilities," said Kenneth H. Pitetti, professor of physiology and pathophysiology in the College of Health Professions at Wichita State University and a pioneer in the area of exercise and disability. "People with disabilities and their families need access to information about fitness and health. The medical community generally is uninformed about disability, so people with disabilities are not getting this information from their doctors."
Persons with disabilities will participate in all aspects of the center. Additionally, the center has formed collaborative relationships with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and the National Center on Accessibility to assist in its mission of gathering, organizing, analyzing and disseminating information on physical activity and disability. A research-to-practice panel of 32 leading scientists in physical activity and disability, including Pitetti, will produce monographs on the state of knowledge in their areas of expertise.
"The knowledge is scattered and diffuse. Our first task will be to find out what is known. We will develop an unprecedented data base, analyze the information and then chart a course to advance our knowledge," Braddock said. "We want to see more people with disabilities being physically active and to work with organizations to facilitate programs to meet the needs of persons with specific disabilities."
The center also will engage experts from the UIC Medical Center's department of rehabilitation medicine and restorative medical sciences, School of Public Health, School of Kinesiology, department of physical therapy, College of Nursing, and department of physiology and biophysics in research that relates to physical activity at the molecular, organic, systemic, individual, institutional and societal levels.
Jim Rimmer, principal investigator of the Center on Health Promotion Research, is the co-principal investigator and project director of the new center.
The establishment of the National Center on Physical Activity and Disability in UIC's department of disability and human development is a natural outgrowth of the department's other large center grants, according to officials. These grants include the Great Lakes Disability and Technical Assistance Center, which supports implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the Midwest region; Center on Emergent Disability, which studies trends in the epidemiology and ethnography of disability; and Center on Health Promotion Research, which studies the impact of exercise, nutrition and psychological counseling in persons with stroke, diabetes, arthritis and Down syndrome.
UIC's department of disability and human development has emerged as a national leader not only in research and service, but also in education. It and two other UIC departments established the nation's first Ph.D. program in disability studies last fall. The department is part of UIC's College of Health and Human Development Sciences.
With 25,000 students, the University of Illinois at Chicago is the largest and most diverse university in the Chicago area. UIC is home to the largest medical school in the United States and is one of the 88 leading research universities in the country. Located just west of Chicago's Loop, UIC is a vital part of the educational, technological and cultural fabric of the area.
-UIC-
RSS