Karina Bridges
Trinity University, USA
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Diabetes Metab
Camp powerup, sponsored by the American Diabetes Association, is a weeklong day camp for youth, ages 10-12 years at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Despite best efforts, San Antonio still faces a high rate of childhood obesity, especially in Hispanic/ Latino populations. The purpose of this project is to implement and evaluate the efficacy of camp powerup to further expand the program to other cities facing high rates of childhood obesity. The one-week program was conducted at the west side YMCA and offers an educational and fun-filled environment that focuses on diabetes prevention, healthy nutrition, physical activity, and obesity prevention education. The program was evaluated using qualitative and quantitative data through pre/post surveys given to the youth as well as quantitative data through TANITA Body composition scores of exact body mass indexes (BMIs) of the camperâ??s pre-camp and three months after. The results of this program proved that camp powerup had a positive impact with a 90% improvement on survey scores post camp as well as a significant decrease in the campers BMI scores.
Karina Bridges is pursuing her Bachelors of Science in Biology from Trinity University in hopes of pursuing a Doctorate as a Public Health Nurse Practitioner. She is an Undergraduate research student and worked with a range of Graduate professors-one being in Microbiology where she was selected to present at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in 2016. Currently, she works under the mentorship of Dr. Adelita Cantu, a distinguished Public Health Nurse Practitioner at the University of Texas Health Nursing Department.
