I had a lovely time presenting some of our work assessing the domain/context-specific relationships between physical activity and cardiometabolic health at the Society of Behavioral Medicine's Annual Meeting in Philadelphia this past week!
The theme of the conference was moving behavioral medicine "upstream", which agrees well with the aims of our work and general outlook on eliciting lasting behavior change. More specifically, the environments and systems in which we exist act as strong forces; either facilitating or creating barriers to engaging in health-promoting behaviors. In this way, the problems we face as individuals and, more importantly, as a population (e.g., food insecurity, physical inactivity, etc.), are likely ameliorated through progressive policy and systems-level change.
While improving the systems and environments we exist in is wonderful (and necessary!) to improve population health and reduce health inequities, this is incredibly challenging in practice, with so many stakeholders - each with their own individual priorities - a truly interdisciplinary approach is needed, and one that I, in addition to the wonderful student scholars I met this week, am committed to in my future work.
As these environmental and systems-level changes take time, I do think it's also important to support organizations that are helping to alleviate the negative consequences of our current systems RIGHT NOW. Here are some local organizations I support. Consider supporting them, or your own local organizations, either with your time and/or financially:
MilWALKee Walks: https://lnkd.in/gfmgts9f
Kinship Community Food Center: https://lnkd.in/ggHUJ6sP
Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity: https://lnkd.in/gKeeaiVs
President @ K2 Consulting Group | We help clients surpass philanthropic stretch goals by 50-150%.
4wI read the article with interest in just what services the neuropsychiatric hospital will provide. Construction intricacies are nice to know, but what will the outcomes mean for our region? Who will the hospital serve and what will the services include? It sure fills an important need.