 Welcome everybody. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here on such a beautiful day when I know we're all very tempted to go outside and absorb that sunshine that seems like this will be the last ever sunshine we'll ever experience. I assure you it will be more tomorrow. You will not regret being here. So I'm Susan Munkras of the CUPS office. CUPS stands for Community University Partnerships and Service Learning. And it's my great pleasure to be co-hosting along with Barry Tinker of the Department of Education and School of Education and Social Services a visit from Dr. Nick Popforth. I'm going to put on my reading glasses to make sure that I correctly introduce Dr. Popforth's vitals and official information here at home set. Dr. Popforth is the chair of the Department of Research and Information Science and Professor of Research Medicine and Statistics in the Mortbridge College of Education at the University of Denver. That's one of his jobs. And then more relevant to the C.R. Community Participatory Action Research methods that he will be talking about, he is adjunct professor with the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center at the Colorado School of Public Health which is located at the University of Colorado in Denver. He obtained his Ph.D. in Curriculum Instruction and Evaluation from the University of Illinois Action College. And today Dr. Popforth will be talking about his current research and partnerships which involve rural school-based intervention studies related to physical activity and healthy eating among K-12 students in the San Luis Valley and southeast Colorado. In the San Luis Valley is a rural area in southwestern Colorado about the size of Connecticut which Dr. Popforth will describe. So that's his official information. And now having had Dr. Popforth here for almost 24 hours, I can say that he appreciates the food, enjoys biking, is an excellent facilitator and has a curious and eager mind for all folks doing participatory action. Research I've been getting can help move him from meeting to meeting and consultation to consultation. And it's been a great delight to see people on our campus light up at the opportunity to hear from someone who practices participatory action research. We have all benefited from the kinds of questions and thoughts and reactions that we've been getting to individuals. So it's the greatest pleasure that I welcome Dr. Popforth to give up a wrap up. Thank you. First of all thank you Susan for your very kind introduction and thank you for everybody for inviting me to give this lecture today and for taking time out of your busy schedule. Students I'm so sorry that I have to drag you out of your class today. I'm sure you'd much rather be there. There may be a question for you during the talk today. So stay alert, stay off the phones and try and give me, if not your undivided attention, a certain amount would be great. But I'm seriously, I'm honored to be with you here today. It's a lot of fun to be in Vermont. Never been here before. I want to come back. Not just because of the food but I do want to come back. So I'm very fortunate to be able to work with colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center at the Colorado School of Public Health. And you see those pictures there? They're my people. I have been doing work with them in rural Colorado for 10 years now, over 10 years. And we like to think of ourselves as prachydemics because, do you like that word prachydemics? We like to think of ourselves as prachydemics because we balance, try to balance theory and practice to address health disparities and promote health equity. We do what is called translational science, which is really all about reducing the time it takes to put evidence-based practices in place in schools and communities. What do I mean by evidence-based practices? I mean programs and policies that have been studied extensively and shown to work in a variety of settings. So we've been helping schools implement these evidence-based practices by partnering with teachers and administrators who are committed to improving the health of children in rural schools. And we do most of our work in the San Luis Valley. It's a region, rural region of southern Colorado, roughly the size, as Susan said, of Connecticut. It's on the strength of this work that I think I've been invited here to speak about the good things that can happen when academics and community members come together to design and implement programs that increase K-12 kids opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating. So my talk today, first I'm going to share my impressions of some of the challenges facing rural communities in which my colleagues and I do our work. And I think they apply to many American rural communities. Then I'm going to describe how two partnerships and have led to programs that have increased opportunities for healthy eating and physical activity in schools. And then I'm going to end with some reflections about the features of these partnerships that have led to the program's success. So community partnerships, they are rooted in the idea that expertise is widely distributed. University researchers like me have some valuable knowledge that could enhance the quality of communities. But if we're going to do research, particularly in rural communities, we'd better do it in partnership with people from those communities who have different sets of expertise and different points of view. But first let's take a step back. Rural America is not homogeneous, right? And if one is going to engage in rural research, then you've got to accept this notion it's crucial. Often rural America evokes idyllic images. Think Little House on the Prairie or The Andy Griffith Show. These are idyllic views, right? One in which trees and fields explode in green and cattle graze beside old barns. Indeed America has often wrapped up rural life in a snug cocoon of fantasy. Values such as economic independence, just rewards for hard work, community cohesion, strong families, close ties to the land. Those things are often mentioned. Last year's election brought new attention to rural America. And this attention is overdue, I think. Rural America has largely been ignored by reporters, by researchers and policymakers. Much of this attention is useful and important because almost 75% of the United States land area belongs to rural counties. These counties, you see them in the blue areas of the map. The green, the yellow and the orange areas are small, medium and larger metropolitan areas. Over 45 million people, roughly 15% of the population of the country live in rural areas. So as I said earlier, America is not homogeneous. And the San Luis Valley, the region that I'm going to talk about today includes some of the poorest counties in the United States. The San Luis Valley, as you can see, is a wide plain nestled amidst the high peaks of southern Colorado, about 250 miles southwest of Denver. Actually, the vastness of the land renders the term valley somewhat of a misnomer. At altitudes of above 7,000 feet, the San Luis Valley is technically a high desert. But the surface is underlain by shallow aquifers that in places form lakes, marshlands and warm springs. The valley's scattered wetlands are home to eagles, waders and wildfowl. And the valley's residents are following in the footsteps of the Utes, the Apaches and Navajo, Kit Carson, Settlers, Buffalo Soldiers, Miners and Railroaders. So the terrain of the valley, and I'll probably refer to it as the valley from here on, is reminiscent of the plains of the grain belt. The rolling plains stretch 80 miles from north to south and 40 miles from east to west. These plains give way to separate mountain ranges which provide a geographical border to the valley. Rugged mountains and wildlands, stunning views, cold winters, unrelenting winds, high poverty and low health outcomes characterize the valley. Scattered throughout this valley are small towns such as Alamosa, which is the home of Adam State University, the only higher education institution in the valley. Creed, Del Norte and San Luis. Communities that each have a deep sense of place. The region relies on a largely ranching economy, but in recent years small farms have been swallowed up by larger corporate ones. And with larger farms employing fewer people, the absence of a diverse economy has resulted in high unemployment and more low paying and seasonal jobs. Empty storefronts stare blankly onto many of the town's main streets. Businesses and job growth are sorely needed because as one educator told me, quote, we don't want the valley's biggest export to be our children and our talent. So the San Luis Valley's beauty belies many social, economic and health challenges. It looks like a postcard but many of the 48,000 residents do not live picture postcard lives. The six counties that make up the San Luis Valley are actually among the poorest in the state. In four of these counties, one in three children live in poverty and in the other two counties, one in four lives below the poverty line. These children and their families face remarkably adverse conditions associated with crushing poverty, including high unemployment, poor housing, high illiteracy rates and a growing heroin, opioid and meth problem. As one local historian told me recently, quote, in many respects the region's natural beauty makes its poverty all the more ironic. Money matters when it comes to health, right? And barriers to care are often felt most strongly by rural residents. Much of the population of the San Luis Valley is in poor health, as you can see from this slide. Childhood obesity rates are almost 50% higher than the state average and the figures are similar for adults. High poverty rates mean that many families are in a constant state of imbalance and chronic stress because their needs so dramatically outweigh the resources or assets that they have at their disposal. These conditions make people more susceptible to taking drugs. Heroin, opioid and meth addiction is a growing problem which has led to an increase in crime. So individuals with high care health care needs such as chronic diseases or behavioral health issues are especially at risk. Recently, a Texas A&M School of Public Health report titled Rural Healthy People 2020 concluded that Rurality is now one of the nation's 14 biggest health disparities. San Luis Valley residents have limited access to affordable quality health care. There's a shortage of primary care physicians and other health professionals who can help protect and improve physical, social and mental health. And high poverty rates also mean that lots of children don't always know how or when they'll get their next meal. Low housing standards, high unemployment and high illiteracy rates are part of the harsh reality of the San Luis Valley. And while the schools are the heart of the community for many of these small towns, they are struggling. So let's turn to education. Over half of U.S. schools are rural. Compared to urban students, rural students have higher levels of mortality, suicide, obesity, tobacco, alcohol and illegal substance use, sexual activity and teen births, and lower rates of school readiness and proficiency on standardized tests. And as poverty rises, the scope of the educator's job has expanded to one of caretakers. And some of you in here, I know want to be teachers, this is not meant to put you off, this is just meant to tell you the reality, right? Rural students are coming to school with more trauma that educators must mitigate before they can even begin to teach language, arts and math. Kids need loving care to grow normally. And schools in the San Luis Valley have fewer resources such as nurses, school counselors and psychologists to pick up on childhood mental behavioral developmental problems. One teacher recently told me, some days the most you can do is love them and feed them and make them feel safe and hope you can get a little reading in and a little math in. So the schools in the San Luis Valley serve as safety nets for many students whose parents are traumatized by hopelessness and despair, born out of economic insecurities and poor mental health. Kids have rough starts when their parents are addicted to drugs or who are in and out of jail. Many kids have been taken from their parents' custody and ricochet between schools and foster homes. Drug addiction spans generations and breaks apart families. As one social worker told me recently, meth makes you forget that you ever had children. So consequently, oh the half of the students in our partner schools in the San Luis Valley don't live with their parents. In several of the most impacted schools, principals tell us that children are often late to school because their parents aren't functioning. These kids are often hungry and some don't want to go home over the weekend. As one principal told me, if they need clothes, the school gets them. If they need food, they get food. If they need love, they get love. It's not a very positive story so far, is it? It does get better. The plight of the schools, however, in the San Luis Valley is further undermined by perhaps the primary obstacle facing rural education. Namely, the tendency of federal and state government to standardize almost everything in education. The laughable notion that one size fits all leaves rural schools forced to implement policies that are poorly suited for their communities. All too often, rural educators are expected to swallow federal and state reforms that are often unfunded mandates and don't take into account factors that specifically pertain to rural schools. So what are the implications of all this for academics who wish to conduct research in rural schools? Well first, we need to take the time to understand some of these challenges that face rural communities and the children, teachers and administrators there. We should visit the schools, we should sit down with the people there to hear their reality before we develop programs designed to meet those challenges. And we should stick around to make sure that these programs work, not for weeks or months but for years. By taking the time to listen, researchers show that they value the community's knowledge about and hopes for their children. Only then, through shared understandings, can researchers begin to address the challenges facing rural schools. It means not conducting research on rural communities but in collaboration with those rural communities. It also means placing the values, the knowledge and the guidance of the community members at the center of the process. Since 2005, I've been a regular visitor to the San Luis Valley. In a typical year, I spend about up to 50 nights and days a year there, usually two or three days at a time. As I mentioned earlier, I don't do this work alone but I do it with colleagues from the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center at the Colorado School of Public Health. Our approach to doing research contrasts strongly with that top-down state and federal mandate scenario that I just told you about, that schools are typically faced with having to implement. Rather than telling rural schools what they should do without knowing the realities they face each day, we build trusting relationships and productive partnerships with them. We collaborate with them to find ways to put evidence-based practices into place that have been shown to improve students' opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating. And we believe that schools are really important venues for health and wellness interventions. For too long, health and wellness have been put in a silo separate from education and learning, but education and health affect both individuals and society so they must work together whenever possible. Schools are perfect settings for this collaboration. Our children spend one-sixth of their time in schools and two-thirds, they eat two-thirds of their meals there. A quarter of U.S. children attend rural schools. In rural communities, schools may be the only place where children can develop habits that promote lifelong wellness. In the past five years or so, several health and education experts including the Centers for Disease Control, the American Society for Curriculum Development, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and others have stressed the need that kids need to be healthy in order to learn. Schools provide an excellent opportunity to teach children about the long-term benefits of nutrition and activity so that healthy habits persist into adulthood. And changing the school environment helps kids be healthier and healthier kids are stronger learners. So if we make it easier for students to eat healthier and move more in schools, we can help them achieve academically. So the adverse conditions that I've just described facing many of the students in the San Luis Valley make it even more important to promote their health and wellness. Poor nutrition, excessive calorie consumption and too little physical activity are associated with the prevalence of high obesity rates in rural areas together with associated health risks including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. So the school environment plays a big role in ensuring that kids get enough healthy foods and physical activity. As an aside, I thought I'd show you some pictures of school lunches around the world. It's not directly related to my talk, but it is interesting. If you look at the top two, you've got Finland and Italy, then you look at the bottom, you've got the USA. Probably the only worst lunch you can find will be one from England, but I couldn't find one from England. But you can see the difference there. Students who get the nutrition they need are stronger learners. But many families in the San Luis Valley have limited options when it comes to putting fresh healthy food on the table. Picking up produce may require a 30 mile drive to the nearest grocery store. And when time and money are limited, healthy food can be a luxury for rural families. Insufficient food and corresponding hunger is associated with poor academic achievement and the likelihood of repeating a grade. Students who eat little or no breakfast are more likely to make errors in school and report feeling hungry before lunch. Offering a nutritious breakfast at school has been shown to improve attendance, alertness and mood, creativity and the completion of simple academic tasks among undernourished students. Dietary adequacy and variety, specifically fruit, vegetable and dietary fat intake, have been identified as important to academic performance specifically. Let's turn to physical activity and learning now. Regular physical activity during childhood is also important for promoting obviously lifelong health and well-being and preventing various health conditions. Not only does regular physical activity improve health and fitness among children, but they will also build stronger bones and muscles and reduce the risk of developing those serious health conditions that I mentioned earlier. Can physical activity improve a child's academic performance? Well, when children participate in the recommended amount of physical activity, 60 minutes a day, multiple health benefits arise as you can see from here. Incorporating exercise and movement through the school day makes children a little bit less jittery, a little bit easier to handle and more focused on their schoolwork. There is also increasing evidence that physical activity improves cognitive function among children. You can see the difference between the brain sitting and the brain after walking. And after at least 20 minutes of exercise, children test better in spelling, reading and math or shown another way. So this research underlines the need for interventions, right, to get kids to move more while they're at school. And teaching them to enjoy exercise now will hopefully mean that healthy habits persist into adulthood. The good news is that researchers know that physical activity in healthy eating boosts kids' brain power and academic skills while providing other physical, mental and social benefits. And researchers also know that there are several evidence-based practices that increase opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating in schools. For example, if kids have recess before lunch, they tend to eat healthier foods. Or if students have access to equipment and inclusive activities on the playground, guess what, they tend to move more during recess. The bad news is that it can take several years for evidence-based programs and practices to be implemented because schools, particularly those in low-income rural settings, don't have access to the information they need. The research to practice delay presents a pressing need for researchers to develop strategies that speed up the time it takes to put evidence-based practices in place in rural schools. So over 10 years ago, my colleagues and I suggested to San Luis Valley superintendents and principals that they emphasize healthy eating and they squeeze more time for physical activity into the school day. But they were hesitant because they were concerned about reducing instructional time necessary to prepare students for high-stakes testing. During one of my early visits to the San Luis Valley in 2006, a principal told me, what we continue to hear is no child left behind. I haven't heard don't leave overweight kids behind. It's about keeping kids academically fit. That's foremost on our minds. Since then, we've found that more and more administrators understand the importance of making their schools more supportive of physical activity and healthy eating. But they simply don't have the time and the resources to accomplish this goal. My colleagues and I realized that if we want schools to be settings for health promotion, we need to provide them with outside support and leadership. And that's what we've been doing for the past 10 years. Back in 2000, our work was funded by the Centers for Disease Control. But since 2010, the Colorado Health Foundation has funded the Helm Project, which stands for Healthy Eater's Lifelong Movers. Now the question only for the students. What's significant about the logos? What's interesting? Let's start with AIM or the right-hand side. Now let's go to the left-hand side. Anybody got an answer? What's interesting? Do we need to go to the adults in the room? The older people in the room? We have an answer. Yes. One side shows children eating, at least with an apple. The other side shows a ball. Excellent, but not the complete answer. Yes. Speak up. There's movement in each one. There's movement in each one. We're getting closer. Who's jumping higher? Which gender is jumping higher? The girl. The girl. That's it. That's all it is. I just thought that was interesting. It was intentional on our part. Oh my goodness, that was a lot of work. So Helm stands for Healthy Eater's Lifelong Movers. And the foundation of this project is university community partnerships. And these programs, which I'll talk about in just a moment, have increased K-12 students' opportunities for physical activity, the ball, and healthy eating, the apple. So there are two programs under the Helm umbrella. One program is called AIM, which stands for Assess, Identify, and Make It Happen. And the other program is the PEA, which is an acronym for the Physical Education Academy. First, let's talk about AIM, which was developed by my colleague, Elaine Balanski. AIM is a planning process which stands for Assess, Identify, and Make It Happen. And AIM helps schools get environmental and policy features that support healthy eating and physical activity into place. What may you ask do I mean by environmental and policy features? Good question. An environment feature is an evidence-based practice that schools put into place. For example, a healthy eating evidence-based practice is to put fruit and vegetables at the front of the lunch line rather than the back. Because research shows that kids are more likely to eat fruit and vegetables when they're put there. Or classroom teachers are trained to introduce short bursts of physical activity. We call them brain boosters to break up the monotony of seat time. You saw the two brains earlier in that slide. A policy feature, on the other hand, is an expectation that schools put into place. For example, that vending machines are only stock healthy snacks and water. Or parents are asked to provide healthy foods for classroom parties. Now, rather than telling schools what to do, AIM elicits their voice and their decision-making power. As researchers, we bring our knowledge of best practices for increasing healthy eating and physical activity in schools. And community members, school people, decide which changes to implement based on their knowledge about what works, about what will be a good fit for their school. And I'm going to tell you a little bit more about how AIM works. Schools first assemble a task force of five to nine individuals. We insist that the principal is on the task force because we found that getting thereby in is essential for any school wellness initiative to succeed. Other members of the task force usually include the school counselor or the nurse, if there is one, a secretary, a physical education teacher, food service director, classroom teachers, and parents. The task force is facilitated by a trained AIM facilitator in the top right there who leads the task force through a planning process. Task force members attend seven planning meetings lasting roughly two hours once a month. During the first two meetings, members assess their school environment by comparing what they have in place to promote healthy eating and physical activity with a menu of evidence-based practices developed by the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center. And in doing this comparison, the task force members are able to see the good things that they're already doing. It's important to start with the positive, but also where they're falling short. In the third meeting, they identify evidence-based environment and policy changes known to increase physical activity and healthy eating. And in the remaining four meetings, they make it happen by making informed decisions about which environment and policy changes the school should make and then make a plan to implement those changes in ways that ensure that these changes stick around. Each task force works on making changes to improve opportunities for healthy eating and physical activity. In regards to healthy eating, task forces have introduced water fountains, choices of fruit and veggies at the front of the lunch line, salad bars, veggie and fruit bars, and guidelines for healthy classroom parties. In regards to physical activity, task forces have advocated for more opportunities for physical activity during the school day, including playground improvements. One of the principals built that. He had a tractor and concrete and he built it. It was amazing. And playgrounds designed to maximize physical activity. So these are some of the things that they've done. They've also, in one case, re-instituted a swimming program, a playground storage classroom chair, which means that recess equipment is safely stored away and returned after recess. And in two schools, schools have increased the amount of physical education time because they realize that they weren't giving their students enough. Okay, so let's now turn to the physical education academy. It's the other part of the Helm project. And the physical education academy is an intervention that's incorporated evidence-based practices to improve the quality of physical education in rural schools. And it's led to increases in the quality of the instruction and the amount of physical activity that kids get in PE class. The origins of the physical education academy go way back to 2006 when my colleague Elaine Balanski and I interviewed up to about 40 K-12 physical education teachers throughout rural Colorado. And we heard a very similar story. Physical education teachers wore many hats during the school day. Often they hadn't received high quality physical education training. Sometimes they didn't even know about or have the resources to attend physical education conferences or workshops. Their principles were fairly hands-off when it came to overseeing the content of their curriculum and the quality of their instruction. Most of them had an annual budget of less than $300 and they tended to feel somewhat isolated, both in their school building and from the broader physical education community. Take a physical education teacher from a small rural town as an example. Originally certified in elementary education, he'd been asked to teach physical education by his principal 15 years previously. He described the challenges this way. Besides being in a dusty, poorly lit gym for most of the day, I find it hard to come up with activities for a broad range of children each week. A common sentiment expressed by teachers was, we do have a district curriculum but I couldn't tell you where it is. And a veteran rural physical education teacher who's highly respected in her community said, I've been teaching here for 30 years and we've never had a physical education workshop. So despite the need for quality physical education in these rural schools, our interviews suggested that the curricula was often inadequate or non-existent. Physical education classes were held in aging facilities that lacked equipment. Lessons tended to focus on team sports rather than on physical fitness and skill development, which are stronger determinants of healthy exercise habits. All the teachers felt isolated and had not received any physical education professional development. Their wish list consisted of wanting more physical education time with their students, more professional development, enough equipment to provide a quality program and to feel more connected to other physical education teachers in the region. So given the high poverty and the obesity levels in the San Luis Valley and the fact that there are few structured and affordable opportunities for children to be physically active outside school, the role of physical education programs in building a generation of lifelong movers is vital. And as someone with a physical education background, you didn't mention this, Susan. That's okay. So I'm very proud of being a former physical education teacher. But as someone with a former physical education teacher, I felt I could play a role in advocating for quality physical education programs in the San Luis Valley. And I felt comfortable doing this because our experience with AIM that you heard about earlier had shown that schools appreciate it when university researchers facilitate them in a process to plan and implement changes that increase opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating. So drawing on our observational visits and our discussions with educators, Elaine Balansky and I wrote two small grant proposals which describe the need to partner with the community to develop an intervention to increase the quality of physical education instruction and the quantity of moderate to vigorous physical activity during physical education classes. Moderate to vigorous physical activity is anything, well, walking and above, so to speak. And we're striving for at least 50% of what we call MVPA, moderate to vigorous physical activity in physical education classes. Both grants were funded and Elaine and I formed a collaborative comprising 18 individuals, diverse individuals representing K-12 education and community health in the San Luis Valley, higher education and state and national physical education organizations. Now these individuals all brought unique strengths to the partnership. Four physical education teachers knew firsthand the facilitators and barriers that influenced the quality of physical education programs in the San Luis Valley. The administrators knew the new Colorado state standards and the feasibility of professional development initiatives in the San Luis Valley. The community health advocates provided a broad view of physical activity initiatives in the community and the cultural issues influencing education in the San Luis Valley. The state and national physical education experts knew about curriculum reform at state and national levels and evidence-based physical education curriculum that had been shown to improve students' moderate to vigorous physical activity and the quality of instruction. The two Adam States groups, these university people, PE professors and PE majors, brought knowledge about school physical education programs throughout the San Luis Valley. And Elaine and I brought knowledge of evidence-based practices in public health, physical education and teacher education and how to write large grant proposals. So that's the collaborative and our goal was to develop a plan to improve the quality of physical education in the San Luis Valley's 14 school districts. We held nine six-hour meetings from March 2009 to January 2010 and in some respects our approach resembled the aim process. First we kind of assessed the current state of physical education in the San Luis Valley and we heard administrators and physical education teachers' views about the barriers to quality physical education. Then we conducted literature searches and held interviews with state and national physical education experts to identify several evidence-based curriculum. And we determined that one of them called SPARK would be a good fit for teachers in the San Luis Valley. And we developed a roadmap, way too much for you to see here but the purpose of this roadmap was to identify the roles and responsibilities of students, physical educators, principals, classroom teachers, superintendents and school boards to achieve high quality physical education so that students graduate with the knowledge and skills to pursue lifelong physical activity. And that roadmap turned out to be used as a foundation for a much larger grant proposal. And the grant proposal had four components, all of them evidence based practices. One, it had a curriculum, SPARK. Secondly, it had workshops so teachers could learn how to implement SPARK in their schools. Thirdly, it had equipment because teachers need equipment to implement SPARK with fidelity. And finally, it had what we call site coordinator visits. These are like instructional coaches who mentor the physical education teachers once a month, each person once a month for a day to help them implement a very, very different approach to physical education. One which involves kids moving more and having fun and much more developmentally appropriate. And we developed a rubric for high quality PE which basically was the curriculum of these meetings between the master teachers and the physical education teachers. And then in October 2010 and for the next three years, the San Luis Valley physical education academy served students, well schools, students, teachers, administrators in the region. Now none of this would have happened if academics like me had relied on my traditional sources of knowledge such as peer reviewed articles, right? And it wouldn't have happened if the community had relied on knowledge. We listened to one another in those meetings. We engaged in critical discussions about problems and issues and we worked together to arrive at a solution. And throughout the implementation of the physical education academy we conducted research to determine whether it had improved the quality of physical education instruction and increased the amount of students moderate to vigorous physical education classes. MVPA from baseline before the physical education academy began to follow up two years later there was a 31% increase in the amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity in physical education classes. And this figure is higher than any other national study. We also found positive changes in the quality of education and the quality of instruction in particular. For instance, classroom management trended down. Game play trended down which is good. The kids are playing one game with one ball and 30 kids. That wasn't happening as much. Fitness activity generally tended to go up and skill drills went up. And all these findings are statistically significant and frankly I can't go into details but if you really want to have trouble sleeping then there's two journal articles that you might want to consult. So I'm getting to the end of my talk now and my goal this afternoon has been to share the importance of partnerships with the rural communities to address health disparities and promote health equity. And there are several features of the partnerships in AIM and the physical education academy that have led to these programs successes. First, we work on an issue that is of mutual importance to the community and university partners. The planning process that created the physical education academy consisted of people who are all invested in improving the quality of physical education instruction. AIM task force members, a school personnel who want to make environment and policy changes that improve their students' opportunities for healthy eating and physical activity. And as researchers we want to speed up the translation process to get evidence-based practices into schools and study the best ways to do that. So everyone is on the same page. Second, our planning processes are always well organized. As a result, everyone fully participates and everyone helps create a unity in purpose that leads to success. We find a common time to meet together. Our agendas are shared ahead of the meetings. We have great food and a lot of fun. And most important from the school's point of view, we use our time efficiently and productively so that momentum is maintained. We build on the strengths and the resources within the community. We take great care in recognizing that our community partners possess a wealth of local, cultural and historical knowledge and lived experience as school professionals. Their collective wisdom brings important insider information and resources to the table that is unattainable to us outside researchers. And as a result, trust, communication and respect characterize our partnerships. Fourth, as researchers, we understand the value of evidence-based practices. And the school partners know all about the unique pressures and opportunities facing their schools. When these complimentary sets of knowledge and expertise are brought to the table so that decisions are made together, the process is enjoyable and fulfilling and, most importantly, leads to important changes in schools. And finally, local programs are sustained and knowledge about what works is shared nationally. As a result of AEM and the Physical Education Academy, the people most affected by issues of child and adolescent health in their rural communities have had the opportunity to shape the policies and practices in their schools. Our work has continued to attract large-scale funding, and in 2013 we expanded the Helm project to 29 rural school districts in southeast Colorado. And the work is still going on. We trained two of our most talented San Luis Valley Physical Education teachers in the SPARC program. We sent them to San Diego for a week to learn how to be workshop leaders. And last Monday, not this Monday, but last Monday, we were all in Lamar, southeast Colorado, and they were teaching physical education teachers in southeast Colorado. And just this Monday, just four days ago, we met with our community advisory board in the San Luis Valley to discuss where to focus our efforts in the next five years. So my goal this afternoon has been to share how university researchers can engage in partnerships to support rural schools' efforts to elevate the importance of physical activity and healthy eating in all facets of the school day. The schools that have partnered with us on AIM and the Physical Education Academy have implemented evidence-based practices that are relevant to their setting and have important health and academic outcomes for educating the whole child. And partnering with these schools over many years has helped us as researchers understand what works in school-based research. On a personal note, it's tremendously rewarding to work with our school partners to help address important health concerns. My colleagues and I see our partners learning together to shape their own programs in ways that go well beyond what we could offer as academics by ourselves. Working in partnership with communities may be a bit harder than doing traditional research in getting you tenure and it certainly doesn't lead to accolades although I'm here today, so I guess that's kind of an accolade, right? But our work, most importantly, is to get community needs as well as the needs of researchers and that's important. We've published, we have got grants and yes, we've got tenure and we will continue to do our work in and with the community. Working in respectful and productive partnership with people who care and who own the purpose behind the work is a real sincere human commitment I think it also makes for better science. So with that if you have any discussions if you'd like to have a discussion or if you have any questions I'd be happy to entertain either and there's my contact information together with kids from Sierra Grande School. Please come forward if you have a question. I have two questions. Tell me when you are first. I'm Gail Redman and I teach at Casselton University a couple hours That's a physical education program. Health and Human Movement is a sport. That's a good one. One question is how have you continued to help the schools fund their healthier foods? Not a simple answer but one, they've been able to advocate to their school boards for funding so a good example of that would be the water fountains. The kids and the teachers in this particular school started a campaign which eventually led to a school board presentation and on the basis of the evidence that they provided about the importance of water during a school day the school board decided to allocate funds that might have been spent on something else for those particular items. So that's one specific example. We connect them with grant funding. One of the things we commit to is not to write grants for schools but to help them assist with writing grants for schools and that's how some of those other initiatives have been funded. But a lot of it is just reorganized a reorganization of resources. Yeah. Number two. To improve physical education how did you convince the physical educators and the administrators and the classroom teachers everybody on your team that it was going to be worthwhile for them to put in that funding? It wasn't difficult because number one we had a little bit of seed funding about $20,000 to support that one year planning process. So we were able to reimburse schools for substitute pay for teachers. School administrators didn't take the money although we would have offered it to them. The community health advocates we paid them $100 a day because they were giving up a day and the physical education majors also received funding a little bit of money. And the biggest advantage we have in convening people like this which may seem a bit daunting to folks we know our situation is I've been working down there for 10 years so I have good relationships with people in the schools we know principals and superintendents many of them by their first names we drink coffee with them we may even have a beer with them I read the Valley Courier newspaper every day to understand what's going on and read it online we try and make ourselves students of the community and people who genuinely are committed to it So it sounds rather arrogant but it wasn't difficult those four physical education teachers we chose happened to be four of the best in the San Luis Valley they stood out among their peers but it wasn't difficult because we were addressing a community identified need Does that make sense? Pleasure, thank you Hello I teach environmental studies here at UVM I have two questions also I wonder about do you have any data on the health outcomes that's quite an increase in physical activity obesity rates do you have any data on how it's affected kids with ADHD we do have we were able to extrapolate and I'm not the scientist my co-colleague is we were able to look at kilo calorie output because of the increase in moderate to vigorous physical activity among the kids but no we have not looked specifically at that this is where we need a multidisciplinary team in this work as I mentioned Elaine and I brought certain skill sets to the project but we don't have those skill sets and if we had we might have looked at the ADHD issue anecdotally teachers do tell us they're being honest they're not just trying to blow smoke up a trouser leg the kids are more after physical education kids come back better prepared to work that there is less classroom misbehavior but that's just anecdotal as far as what we're hearing but no we don't have those data unfortunately the second question is about the nature of the physical activity after primary Colorado is so beautiful there's so much about the hiking and skiing and all that are these kids is this part of Colorado or is there access to parks does physical education have to be all inside in a gym or what are they doing outside good question the irony of the San Luis Valley is that it is a beautiful area and mountains are within 30 or 40 miles but because of the employment rather the social class status of most of these kids they don't access them as much as probably you and I would so that's definitely one issue parks there are some parks in some of the bigger towns and cities but in the smaller rural communities with 50 or 100 people there's literally nothing and so the levels of physical activity are low and one of the other problems is that every district apart from one so 13 of the 14 districts are on a four day week school week because of funding they're saving money so we have this problem and the principals and teachers have talked to us about it of kids leaving school on a Thursday and coming back to school on a Monday often being unsupervised because their parents may be not available and they come to school on Sunday on Monday hungry and we hear horrendous stories of kids just playing game computer games and things like that so there is access to parks and not recreation facilities though there's only one boys girls club in the whole San Luis Valley and that's in Alamosa so there's very few opportunities for structured physical activity and it's a bit of a pipe dream at the moment is that we develop a partnership to look at how existing buildings and spaces that aren't being utilized in these towns and many of them are dilapidated run down vacant buildings how we could turn some of those buildings into spaces where people could do physical activity one of the latest research articles I read showed that Hispanic women in particular are more likely to do physical activity when it's connected to their churches so there's a whole bunch of literature out there that we can move into and learn from if we wish and that's one of the things I'd like to do but no the school is the for most kids school is the primary location for physical activity it's the only space because they can't afford or don't have access to structured physical activity yeah thank you very much tell me who you are Hi I'm Casey and I'm a professional here studying education Congratulations I'm wondering what is being done in the program's intention to accommodate students with special needs or disabilities Great question One of the reasons why we chose why the teachers in the group chose SPARC the physical education we chose curriculum we chose was because it was very intentional to include in kids with disabilities in regular PE class that was one of the criteria that we used to select SPARC so we hear really warm they make me feel happy stories of physical education teachers incorporating kids in wheelchairs and other disabilities in the PE class having older kids helping younger kids so in general I think it's a positive scenario it certainly wasn't happening when the teachers were using a lot of those kids would be sitting in the bleachers or in their wheelchairs and we were able to create a cultural shift around that mainly because of the physical education curriculum that we chose which was a very scripted curriculum very tinkly here would have actually be very disappointed because it's completely teacher-proofed curriculum but again this came from the community the community said we need something that's very structured the PE teacher said we need lesson plans you know we don't have the skills to do it I don't compromise my philosophy with that but it does every lesson has some reference to disability so really important great question thank you are you getting paid to come up and talk you're getting extra paid I would change it I'm not I'm in a fresh community and I'm studying education in English and I was wondering if there were any volunteer opportunities especially in Colorado I think I think it would be a great alternative great summer program I understand contact information on the slide there email me I can't promise anything but if you wanted to come to Colorado for a week and said to me can I come to the San Luis Valley and I was going there I'd be open to that yeah great question yes Tom Tom wants to come up wondering I saw that there were parents on the advisory committee for the not always I have to say but yeah because some schools are planning for the night so what do you say is it feasible desirable to have the involvement of parents and kids themselves planning a wedding great question parents really great what possible parents would be wonderful to have on these committees for obvious reasons they know the situation that their kids are going through first hand there is some opportunities there to help parents perhaps understand some issues around healthy eating and physical activity we've told with the idea of having children on these aim task forces ourselves have told us because we thought somewhat naively student council kids would be good for this these are kids that are used to go into meetings and maybe more attuned to leadership and the teachers told us that they thought that the content would be just too mundane and a bit too boring for the kids however and I'm pretty sure that I'm writing saying this we've done this with elementary and middle schools aim elementary and middle schools and I think at the middle school level there have been some students on the task forces if they're not on the task force there's certainly attempts by members on the task force particularly teachers to connect with the kids to let them know what's going on but in general the teachers have told us that they felt like the kind of conversations and discussions we were having were kind of developmentally a little bit more advanced for kids that again the truth is though that those two hour meetings are jam packed they're very focused they have to be people don't have time to waste so we do keep things moving and that may also have been a consideration and there may be simple things like meeting after school and that kind of stuff but we have done other projects I didn't talk about them where we have specifically worked with students we've worked on a project called the working together project this learning program which specifically works with middle school kids and they go through the aim process A, assess I, identify, M and make it happen and what they do there is they identify school health issues issues in their school that are health related in relation to themselves as middle school kids and that then they do the identify piece they identify evidence based practices to address it may be school bullying for instance that's the one that's come up a lot and then they make it happen by suggesting to their superintendent their principal we need to make these changes so we have done aim with middle school kids and teachers but very few and I think if any elementary school task forces had kids maybe one or two middle school but the working together project gets directly at student voice that's all it is, student voice oh have I exhausted you oh that was a very physically active energetic move I'm I'm I'm here as a question for teaching French I was wondering how the data that you collected and methods that you learned from doing this how you compliant to other subjects outside of the school education or the students in other classes besides physical education do you want to answer that question first do you have any thoughts I know you're asking me the question I'm kind of falling back I just wonder when you have an answer do you remember at maybe by elementary schools that we don't have like a dance day or something I think one of my middle school teachers should have us get up and do some instructors but that wasn't very often so you're asking we will have the question to you one more time so I'll get it out of the way how could you bring the benefits or the techniques that you have come work with this into other subjects besides physical education now you can tell I'm really falling back on the answer well let's just I'll give you my best shot if you think about a principle of student voice in this case the voice of the community that's what I've been focusing on here is in order to put anything into place that's going to stick in a school community then the voice of the community has to be involved together with the voice of the academic professors we're supposed to know stuff so I guess one could think about principles of getting student voice engaged in critiquing some of the everyday kind of learning experiences that they have I'm struggling to think about how that would work I think that's about the best I can do I mean I think that I guess I'm going to come back to student voice all the time I think the people who are most affected by an issue are the ones that have the opportunity to shape it as much as they can however I think when it's combined with knowledge other kinds of knowledge in this in our case academic knowledge in the case of a kid in a classroom the teacher I could see the teacher having a conversation with kids about ways of improving their classroom experience I know that back to the working together project that I mentioned with Tom there one of the things that kids advocated for and it doesn't quite get it your topic, your question but one of the problems identified was high-risk sexual activity going on in the school and that led to a very interesting discussion with the kids these were 7th and 8th graders basically saying to their school administration we need a more systematic health curriculum so it wasn't math or language arts but it was getting closer and it was health and the interesting thing about that particular school was the community was rather conservative one and a very religious one and I'm not certainly criticizing religious communities here but the school community wasn't prepared to make that change the kids wanted it but the community wasn't ready for it the good news is that community now 4 or 5 years later but that's not quite getting at your answer but it is an example of what can happen when kids look at data in this case informal data interview they talk to each other stuff like that and then they were able to advocate for a change so I could go on but one more thing I will say is that another example from working together project was the kids advocated for more after school programs the kids were back to the question of lack of structured physical activity there was nothing to do after school finish so one of the things that the kids asked for was physical activity programming and they were able to get with their superintendent support an array of after school activities now that wouldn't have happened without the working together project so yeah welcome good question we're getting close to the end so I will wrap up the official Q&A right now but remind you that there's a reception up in Manor which is on the fourth floor of this building there's a glorious view from the balcony so you want to slide on up there just to get the chance to see the view as well as have some food and Dr. Cutthorne's will be there I hope he's actually there's food so if you have additional questions feel hesitate to come up and smack people thank you so much for coming