Daniels to promote INShape Indiana

An apple a day might keep the doctor away, but not the governor.

Gov. Mitch Daniels will visit IU today to convene his annual summit. The purpose of this year’s summit is to provide awareness on the health of the children of Indiana.

“We cannot expect the schools by themselves all alone to improve the health of the student, especially given the enormous education task that they have before them,” said Lloyd Kolbe, a professor of applied health science. “There are just so many organizations now on the national level that are working to make it easier for teachers to improve the health of young people.”

The 2008 Indiana Health Summit, part of INShape Indiana, will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Indiana Memorial Union. Howell Wechsler, the director of the Division of Adolescent and School Health at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as Gene Carter, director for the Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, will present. Wechsler said he plans to talk about nutrition as well as the national resources that can help develop school health programs in Indiana.

“We’ve identified six key risk behaviors for young people that are critical to address,” Wechsler said. “Those areas are physical activity, nutrition – what they eat – tobacco use, alcohol and drug use, sexual risk behaviors and the last one is a broad area called injury prevention that deals with unintentional injury prevention, safety-related things. It also deals with violence and suicide prevention. Those are the most critical areas that threaten the health of our young people.”

The summit will allow people to find information about resources, to talk with others and to give support.

“If children are hungry or depressed, if they are ill or suffering from any type of disease, if they simply aren’t healthy, they don’t learn as well as those who don’t suffer from those problems,” Kolbe said.

Daniels’ summit takes place at a different university each year. Although the attendees will have registered to attend the summit, Kolbe said all IU-Bloomington faculty and students are welcome for free. Robert Goodman, dean of the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, said he expects a large turnout.
“It’s our turn to bring it to the Bloomington campus this year, and of course we’re very thrilled it’s coming here,” Goodman said. “The reason the school of HPER is invested in doing this is because our mission is to advocate and help in any way we can to assure that Hoosiers are experiencing less disease.”

Wechsler said he will discuss how the health of Indiana children compares to the children of the nation.

“Indiana is kind of in the middle,” Wechsler said. “It’s not particularly higher than most states; it’s not particularly lower than most states. Congratulations to the government of Indiana for really focusing on the attention on the role that schools play in providing the health of young people. Leaders in education have come to realize that you can’t ‘leave no child behind’ unless you’re addressing the health barriers to their academic performance.”