July 2009

Previous Newsletters

From the Active for Life Program Office
Tips, Tactics and Tools
In the News
Upcoming Events
Funding Opportunities

From the Active for Life® National Program Office

NIA Exercise Guide Now Available
Exercise and Physical Activity: Your Everyday Guide from the National Institute on Aging, a consumer-focused publication, is now available online and in print (http://www.nia.nih.gov/exercise). Active for Life Director Marcia G. Ory, Ph.D., MPH was a member of the National Institute of Aging (NIA) Exercise Guide Panel that developed the document.

CDC's Healthy Communities Program Web Site Goes Live
The CDC Healthy Communities Program Web Site (http://www.cdc.gov/healthycommunitiesprogram/) offers information that can be helpful to community health programs including:

Strategies for Community Wellbeing
Prevention is Primary: Strategies for Community Wellbeing (http://www.preventioninstitute.org/PreventionIsPrimary.html) aims to move future practitioners from the margins of prevention to its core by defining the elements of quality prevention efforts, identifying best practices, and illustrating the application of prevention principles in a multitude of settings.

Resources for People with Disabilities
National Center on Physical Activity and Disability (NCPAD) offers of information and resources that can enable people with disabilities and chronic conditions to become physically active. Some NCPAD materials include:

• Eating Well For Diabetes
• Exercise Guidelines for People with Disabilities
• Fall Injury Prevention and Exercise
• First Steps to Active Health: Balance and Flexibility Exercises for Older Adults
• Walk Your Way to Fitness Video
• What is a Pedometer and How Can I Benefit from Using One?

In the News

Weight Loss and Exercise Program
Tufts University’s Strong Women-Healthy Hearts program has helped women lose weight and trim their waistlines. Researchers reporting in the July issue of the American Journal of Public Health ( http://www.ajph.org/) note that whether the short-term weight loss will translate into healthier hearts in the long run is not yet known. But the findings point to the potential of community programs that target older, sedentary women.

Lifestyle Interventions Can Improve Cancer Survivors Function
Among older, long-term survivors of colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer, a diet and exercise intervention reduced the rate of self-reported functional decline compared with no intervention. Research results are published in the May 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Society (http://jama.ama-assn.org/).

Maintaining Cognition
Adults who do not smoke, exercise moderately at least once a week, are socially active, and have at least a high school education are more likely to maintain cognitive skills through their 70s and 80s than those who do not. Results of this research are published in the June 9 issue of Neurology (http://www.neurology.org/).

Increase in Life Expectancy
From 2000 to 2006, the most recent years for which data are available, life expectancy at age 65 years increased by 0.9 year for the overall U.S. population, one year for white men, .7 year for white women, one year for black men, and 1.1 years for black women. The data is reported in the 2009 National Vital Statistics Report, available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf.

Exercise Can Improve Quality of Life
Exercise appears to improve quality of life in postmenopausal women regardless of whether they lose weight, according to researchers reporting in the February 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine (http://archinte.ama-assn.org/). Researchers also found that women who exercised for longer periods of time had the greatest improvements in mental and physical htmlects of quality of life.

Volunteer Work Produces Health Benefits
A Johns Hopkins study reveals that older black women who spend time with young children in the classroom are not only more active than similar women who don't volunteer, but seem to stay active. Building on results of a 2006 Hopkins study showing that 15 hours of volunteer work a week at a grade school nearly doubled a sedentary older person's overall activity level, the new study demonstrates that the increased activity remains high for at least three years. The study appeared online Jan. 29 in the Journal of Gerontology (http://www.geron.org/).

Prevalence of Overweight, Obesity and Extreme Obesity
Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey indicate that 61 percent of non-Hispanic black women aged 60 and older were obese compared with 32 percent of non-Hispanic white women and 37 percent of Mexican-American women in the same age group. The prevalence of obesity did not differ significantly by race/ethnic group among men. For more information, please visit http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/overweight/overweight_adult.htm.

Aging Related Statistics
Average life expectancy continues to increase. However, rates of gain are inconsistent between the genders and across age brackets, income levels, and racial and ethnic groups. Some disparities also exist between older Americans and older people in other industrialized countries. These and other trends are reported in Older Americans 2008: Key Indicators of Well-Being (http://www.agingstats.gov/agingstatsdotnet/Main_Site/Data/Data_2008.aspx).

Upcoming Events