STRIDE Science: STRIDE Team Presents at National Conference
A STRIDE team consisting of four faculty members and three undergraduate students presented findings from the FLASH study at the National Summit for Building Healthy Academic Communities (BHAC) in Irvine, Calif. The summit, organized by the National Consortium for BHAC, brought together leaders and national authorities to share best practices in promoting and sustaining wellness.
STRIDE faculty organized two symposium sessions for an audience that included experts from dozens of universities around the country. The first session, titled Evidence-Based Health and Wellness Programming: Using Data to Inform Best Practice, focused on a novel, student-based health and wellness data collection model that incorporated rigorous epidemiologic methods with experiential learning in standardized research — better known as Cal Poly's A-Team. During this session, Aydin Nazmi from STRIDE, Ann McDermott from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Veronika Lesiuk from the Cal Poly Kinesiology Department discussed the model, design and data from the FLASH Study.
The second session, titled Translating Data to Action: Capitalizing on the Right Data to Create High-Impact Interventions, focused on one of the nation’s largest prospective college health and wellness studies — better known as Cal Poly's FLASH study. In this session, Nazmi, Marilyn Tseng from the Kinesiology Department, Hannah Roberts from Campus Health & Wellbeing, and undergraduate nutrition student Kelly Koyano discussed strategies to improve campus health and wellness based on FLASH data.
In addition, nutrition majors Kelsey DeGreef and Kelly Koyano presented a research poster titled Eating on Campus: Assessing the Nutrition Environment for Students. DeGreef said, “The BHAC conference was one of my favorite college experiences so far. Not only did I get to network with other wellness-oriented individuals, but I was also able to showcase all the effort my team and I have put into our research.”
Maritsa Enriquez, a sophomore nutrition major, also attended to learn more about college health. Enriquez, who is leading a literature review on longitudinal college health studies for STRIDE, said, “I enjoyed the BHAC conference because it gave me a sense of what other professionals in the health industry are currently doing. It was an eye-opening experience.”
“It was a great opportunity to present the Cal Poly FLASH study at a national summit," Nazmi said. "Our aim is to conduct bigger and better FLASH studies in partnership with other universities across the U.S.”