Currie Writing Sample: Feature Article Writing

 

Christopher Currie

Detroit Dept. of Health and Wellness Promotion

Detroit Healthy Start Initiative

October 4, (2012)

Feature Story

 

Grown-Ups Get Lessons in Eating, Exercise for Kids

 

Inside a church classroom on Detroit’s northwest side, a few dozen adults, mostly women, are walking in nondescript patterns around a set of colored plastic cones which lay on the floor. 

Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up” plays in the background on a nearby CD player.  The music pauses, and everyone scrambles to find the nearest person so that they can pair up.  One woman offers up a set of cards for each person in a group to pick from. 

Each card has a photo of a food item:  a half-cup of low-fat yogurt; a cheeseburger; celery sticks.  The cards also come with a red, yellow, or green dot.  The woman who passed out the cards announces that each person in a team has to perform a set of jumping jacks based on the color of the food item they’ve chosen.  If it’s green, five sets; if it’s yellow, 10 sets, if it’s red, 15 sets.  After everyone has performed his or her designated exercise, the music begins again, and the entire group returns to walking around the cones.

What has just taken place reflects the content of a healthy-lifestyle curriculum being marketed to schools, houses of worship and other organizations with a vested interest in combating childhood obesity. 

Detroit’s Bethany Baptist Church is the host site for the two-day training, organized by staff of the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion.  In a partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ “We Can!” initiative, the free training is being offered to Detroit and Wayne County adults as a means of sharing information on incorporating proper nutrition and regular exercise into families’ daily lives.  Participants in the workshops include among them social-work and education professionals, after-school program volunteers, and concerned parents.

Dustin Campbell, 38, of Detroit is a Community Health Education Specialist with the Detroit Health Department, and heads up the arrangements in getting visiting “We Can!” affiliated staff to facilitate the workshops that are taking place.  From setting up chairs and tables to plugging in PowerPoint projectors, today he has been making sure workshop facilitators have what they need so that the sessions run smoothly.  He asserts the goals of conference are to educate community residents that healthy living and exercise can take on different forms.

 “It doesn’t take you taking time out (for) the gym every day to work out; it just takes being able to…get some exercise (in). You could do it in the comfort of your own home,” said Campbell.

Campbell says that in Detroit diabetes and childhood obesity are linked, and that community residents should feel empowered to be proactive in addressing these health issues.

“In Detroit it’s (an) extremely critical issue, because you have diabetes that is generational,” he said.

Campbell is also skeptical of trends in video-game activity among children and the de-emphasizing of physical education in some school settings. 

“I don’t have anything against computers, X-Box… any of that stuff,” said Campbell, “but it does something to a kid when they don’t go outside and be active, throw a ball around…  Schools are doing away with gym, physical activities, which is a bad thing, really,” he asserts.

Campbell credits Bethany’s pastor, Dr. Samuel H. Bullock, for allowing the event to be staged here, as a means of educating community residents in hopes that they will take the information back to their homes.  Approximately 100 people are present for today’s workshops, which Campbell describes as a good thing, since feedback he’s received indicates that people are engaged to share what they’ve learned.

“They’ve been going away saying ‘All of this information is really helpful…I can’t wait to take it back to my community groups...’  [Then] everybody learns,” said Campbell.

As the workshops wrap up for the day, Campbell is optimistic about the aftermath, hoping that the adults here will help guide the children in their care into healthier lifestyles.  “The people that have been here were informed.  So we’re going to continue to try and share that information, so we can be a healthier city.  Obesity is an issue.  Diabetes is an issue… we have to address it, head-on.”