Anand Ram­per­sad

Par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty has the po­ten­tial to con­tribute to a healthy lifestyle and so­ci­ety. How­ev­er, a worth­while con­tri­bu­tion would on­ly be ben­e­fi­cial if sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty are ap­proached in a strate­gic man­ner and prop­er­ly in­te­grat­ed with oth­er mea­sures for achiev­ing a health so­ci­ety.

The Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (Carpha) an­nounced at its meet­ing in Do­mini­ca (March 2015) that the re­gion is fac­ing a child­hood obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic notwith­stand­ing im­prove­ments in the over­all health sta­tus of chil­dren and young peo­ple over re­cent decades.

Very alarm­ing­ly, Carpha states "that least 1 in every 5 of our chil­dren car­ry un­healthy weights and risk de­vel­op­ing non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs), like di­a­betes and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, lat­er in life." The Re­port al­so states that such re­al­i­ty would re­sult in "high­er life­time health costs for the in­di­vid­ual and the state." http://carpha.org/ar­ti­cles/ ID/53/Pro­mot­ing-Healthy-Weights-in-the-Caribbean-Safe­guard­ing-our-fu­ture-de­vel­op­ment.

In 2012, the Panam Steps Re­port on CNCD in­di­cat­ed an in­crease in heart dis­ease, stroke, di­a­betes, can­cers and cer­tain res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It was re­port­ed that non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases ac­count for over 60 per cent of pre­ma­ture loss of life (death be­fore 70 years). The Min­is­ter of Health as well as oth­er health per­son­nel have al­so point­ed to an alarm­ing in­crease in the over­all lev­el of obe­si­ty es­pe­cial­ly among chil­dren. This grow­ing "fat" so­ci­ety syn­drome among the adult and young pop­u­la­tion is re­lat­ed to sev­er­al so­cio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors.

The adult pop­u­la­tion is af­fect­ed on a dai­ly ba­sis by the de­mands of work, do­ing some­times two or more jobs, traf­fic con­ges­tion, striv­ing for ed­u­ca­tion­al ad­vance­ment, en­gag­ing in leisure ac­tiv­i­ties that in­volve high con­sump­tion lev­els of caloric and cho­les­terol foods and bev­er­ages and lit­tle or no phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty.

On the oth­er hand, the youth is af­fect­ed by the dai­ly de­mands of the ed­u­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum es­pe­cial­ly those stu­dents who are caught in the ex­tra les­son phe­nom­e­non, a fash­ion­able youth cul­ture which is de­fined by high con­sump­tion lev­els of fast food, seden­tary so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties and an over­all low lev­el of in­tense phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties.

The Carpha Re­port 2015 and Panam Steps Re­port 2012 sug­gest that in ad­di­tion to main­tain­ing a healthy di­et, phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is im­por­tant in es­tab­lish­ing an over­all healthy lifestyle and so­ci­ety.

The mea­sures for ad­dress­ing the grow­ing con­cern of in­creas­es in CNCD's and obe­si­ty among the pop­u­la­tion must be linked to their caus­es to en­sure that they are prop­er­ly un­der­stood. This will there­fore al­low for in­formed prac­ti­cal mea­sures as well as ef­fec­tive mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion. Sev­er­al points should be con­sid­ered when de­vel­op­ing a sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty frame­work for a healthy so­ci­ety.

First­ly, there must be a clear ad­vo­cate for pro­mot­ing the ben­e­fits of sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and in­creas­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion rates across the pop­u­la­tion. At the mo­ment the per­cep­tion is the Min­istry of Health is call­ing for an in­crease in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty among the pop­u­la­tion in ab­sence of a part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Sport. There needs to be a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort of var­i­ous min­istries such as Health, Sport, Ed­u­ca­tion, Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Gen­der and Youth to en­sure greater ef­fec­tive­ness in ad­vo­cat­ing the health val­ue of sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty across every seg­ments of the so­ci­ety.

Sec­ond­ly, it is im­por­tant for ad­min­is­tra­tors not as­sume that by just in­di­cat­ing that phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is ben­e­fi­cial, the pop­u­la­tion would en­gage in de­vel­op­ing an ac­tive lifestyle. Sport has to be seen as a so­cial con­struct and any ap­proach to mak­ing it ef­fec­tive from a health per­spec­tive would re­quire an un­der­stand­ing of the many fac­tors that in­flu­ence sport in­volve­ment.

Third­ly, it is crit­i­cal that prop­er mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­at­ing mech­a­nisms are utilised to as­sess mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed. Not on­ly will such an ap­proach al­low for as­sess­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of the ex­ist­ing mea­sures but will al­so al­low for im­prove­ments to achieve the de­sired goals while at the same time en­sur­ing that all re­sources are prop­er­ly op­ti­mised.

Such an ap­proach will re­quire the use of rigid per­for­mance bench­marks and stan­dards. For in­stance in a study con­duct­ed in Eng­land, Smith, Green and Roberts (2004), found that both sport par­tic­i­pa­tion rates and obe­si­ty lev­els had in­creased at the same time.

Fur­ther analy­sis showed that al­though par­tic­i­pa­tion rates had in­creased, there was not a si­mul­ta­ne­ous in­crease in the in­ten­si­ty lev­el of the phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. There­fore, it is im­por­tant not as­sume that once peo­ple be­come ac­tive there will be a re­lat­ed de­crease in obe­si­ty lev­els.

Fourth­ly, al­though sport and health camps would be able to yield the best ben­e­fits for the par­tic­i­pants, the ef­fec­tive­ness of these pro­grammes would be best test­ed when there is con­ti­nu­ity out­side of the con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment of the camps.

For ef­fec­tive con­ti­nu­ity to take place, sup­port has to come from par­ents, guardians, sport and phys­i­cal clubs, com­mu­ni­ty groups and the pri­vate sec­tor.

Fur­ther­more, the as­sess­ment of the mea­sures has to be ex­tend­ed in­to these ar­eas en­sure a prop­er as­sess­ment of the de­sired goals of the mea­sures.