February is heart month, and wearable devices are becoming a larger part of heart health promotion and cardiovascular care. Wearable devices incorporated into clothing or an accessory allow for real-time data collection and monitoring. Data monitoring allows physicians to practice medicine in a post-COVID-19 world where remote, decentralized and personalized patient care are becoming commonplace. …
New Year, New You? Resources to Support an Active Lifestyle
If you’re among the millions of Americans who want to start moving more in the new year, finding resources to exercise safely can be challenging. Whether you’re just getting started or a gym pro, ACSM has resources to help you move more and sit less! Turn on the Tech ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal® has …
Addressing Fitness Index FOMO | Resources for Cities Not Included on the Rankings Report
The American Fitness Index assesses key indicators and ranks the largest 100 U.S. cities by population and names one as the fittest city annually. What do you do if your community wasn’t large enough to be included in the rankings? How can you evaluate your community’s health and fitness? We can help you with that …
Food Insecurity: Defining and Addressing a Community Health Challenge
Food insecurity is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.” Generally, this indicator refers to households who don’t have enough food, particularly healthy food, to eat due to a lack of money and other resources. There are slight variations …
6 Ways to Support Your Clients’ Mental & Physical Well-Being
Regular physical activity provides several long-term benefits that can help prevent and treat mental health disorders. Fitness professionals can support the mental and physical well-being of their clients by implementing some basic strategies that address their health from a 360-degree perspective. 1. What do they like to do? Identify and encourage activities that best fit …
The Importance of Sleep for Health
When we think about the most important actions that we can take to protect our health, we usually consider behaviors such as partaking in regular physical activity or eating a nutritious diet. Yet, an often-overlooked aspect of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is sleep. Sleep has serious implications for your physical and mental health. Adequate sleep …
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Fitness Index Indicators
We can all agree that the COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on our lives and lifestyle in 2020 and continues yet today. Millions were sickened by the virus and hundreds of thousands lost family members. However, not everyone’s lifestyle was affected the same way. Millions lost their jobs, while others saw reduction in their …
Active People, Healthy Nation℠: Creating an Active America Together
Regular physical activity is one of the most important things that people can do to support their health. Being active can immediately help people feel better after each session of activity, and regular physical activity can reduce the risk of many chronic diseases and premature death. Although the benefits of physical activity are well known, …
What Makes Arlington, Virginia the Fittest City in America?
The American Fitness Index scores the country’s 100 largest cities (based on population) on 34 indicators of health. These indicators are broken into two categories: personal health, which measures the health of residents in the community, and community/environment, which measures both efforts that are undertaken by local authorities to promote health and fitness and the …
How High Is Your Bike Score? Barriers to Bikeable Communities
Moving to a new city in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic could have made for a difficult transition. Without the typical options of going out to restaurants, concerts or sporting events, getting to know our new home presented with some challenges. When my husband and I moved to Minneapolis in June of 2020, we …