4 ‘must attend’ BASEM/FSEM conference sessions on physical activity and young people

By Beth Cameron, PR & Communications, Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine @FSEM_UK

action schools logoThis year’s joint BASEM and FSEM Conference, Walk 500 Miles, will include four, not to be missed, sessions covering paediatric medicine. The session starts at 2pm in Edinburgh’s historic Assembly Rooms, on Thursday 2nd October, with Heather McKay, Professor of the Faculty of Medicine University of British Columbia, opening with A School-Based Physical Activity Success Story – Action Schools! a trial based in British Columbia.

The Action Schools! programme uses a comprehensive health model (socio-ecological approach) to provide children with healthier opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating at school. Professor McKay’s presentation will cover 10 years of practical lessons from school based trials and evidence from efficacy, effectiveness and implementation trials from the inception of Action Schools! in 2004 covering 10 schools, to its scale-up covering 1500 schools.

The second session brings us closer to home with Dr Nicola Crabtree, Principal Clinical Scientist and Research Physicist at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, presenting Physical Activity during Childhood. Dr Crabtree will discuss bone as a living tissue, which responds to local and environmental stimuli and howphysical activity and mechanical loading plays an important role in the development of an optimal skeleton resistant to fracture, both during childhood and later adult life.

Neil Armstrong, Professor of Paediatric Physiology and the Provost of the University of Exeter, will follow this by asking: Young People are Fit and Active – Fact or Fiction? This presentation will provide critical analysis of what we know about young people’s physical activity and aerobic fitness in relation to health and well-being. The dose-response evidence underpinning the health-related benefits of physical activity and aerobic fitness during childhood and adolescence is not as compelling as that during adulthood. How many young people are fit and active enough?

The Paediatric session closes with Dr Karl Johnson, Consultant Paediatric Radiologist at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, talking about Imaging Acute and Chronic Injuries in Children and Adolescents. This talk will highlight the imaging differences between children and adults and illustrate the various imaging modalities available. In many instances, the injuries are specific to the paediatric age group as a consequence of the inherent weakness of the growing skeleton and the different dynamics of the paediatric musculoskeletal system.

To book your place at Walk 500 miles visit the conference web page at http://www.ba-sem.co.uk/bookings

Competing interest: This page was posted directly by @FSEM_UK via the BJSM Blog Editor – it was NOT commissioned by the Editor in Chief of BJSM Karim Khan, nor was it edited in any way by him. (arm’s length)

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