CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Among the athletes lacing up their sneakers for the 5K run at the Christie Clinic Illinois Marathon on Friday (April 25) will be a special group of SISTERS.
Although these seven students and faculty members at the University of Illinois are not family, they share a common bond, which they forged while participating in a program that promotes healthy lifestyle choices among African-American women.
Called the Lifetime Health Initiative - or the Sport Intervention with Support, Training, Education, Realization and Socializing (SISTERS) - the program was developed by faculty member Jacqueline McDowell in collaboration with Kimberly Shinew and other campus experts in nutrition and fitness.
McDowell and Shinew are professors in the department of recreation, sport and tourism, a unit within the College of Applied Health Sciences.
The goal of SISTERS is to increase women's physical activity levels through recreational sports participation, and enhance their knowledge and adoption of healthy lifestyle choices through weekly educational and sport programming.
The educational curricula, designed by health educators at the campus health center, included weekly educational sessions that addressed factors such as the challenges, pressures and barriers to living a healthy lifestyle; the health benefits of exercise, and gauging appropriate portion sizes.
Participants learned strategies for adding fruits and vegetables to their diets and went on a grocery store tour to learn how to make better food selections. In a hands-on workshop, which was held in the instructional kitchen of the Activities and Recreation Center, participants learned how to cook healthier "soul foods," such as baked rather than fried chicken and macaroni and cheese with whole-grain pasta.
Graduate student Courtney Dorsey and Brandon Smith, a representative from the U.S. Tennis Association-Midwest, developed and led a cardio tennis training program for the women. Dorsey is McDowell's research assistant and a former collegiate tennis player.
Cardio tennis incorporates intervals of aerobic exercise such as running as well as toning exercises, which boost players' heart rates and burn more calories.
When not practicing tennis, the women trained to run or walk a 5K event.
Although the program was designed with twice-weekly workouts, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the participants voluntarily added a third exercise session, on Saturdays, because they enjoyed the activity and the group support, Shinew said.
Some of the students continue to run together regularly, even though the initiative concluded in mid-March.
"When we run around campus, everybody's staring at us because we go in packs," said Tristin Marshall, who is a sophomore from New Jersey majoring in media and cinema studies. "And it's like, 'Yes, we're black, and we do exercise, and we are in shape, and we're not lazy.' And I think a lot of people are surprised by that. We love the attention. It's all good attention. It's bringing an awareness to people who don't know."
Young adults, including college students, are overlooked by many of the targeted interventions that promote healthy eating and exercise.
But when many young adults enter college, they become more sedentary, exercise less often and less vigorously, develop unhealthy eating habits, gain weight and set themselves up for health problems later in life, McDowell said.
African-American women are at even greater risk of obesity and related health problems than white women.
"We stressed that this is not a diet - it's a lifestyle change," McDowell said. "We told the ladies to only make changes that they felt were realistic to maintain."
Marshall and Apryl Washington, a junior from Chicago, each said that they packed on the dreaded "freshman 15" - plus a few pounds more - during their first year at Illinois. However, both women are on the road to better health now as a result of the eating and exercise habits that they developed while in SISTERS.
Marshall has lost about 10 pounds, and Washington said she is down 12 pounds and one pants size.
"I didn't work out a lot when I first got to campus, or I would do it in binges for like three weeks - and then completely stop," said Washington, who was very active in high school but stopped exercising regularly when she got to college. "The program really encouraged me to make changes that I can continue for a lifetime instead of just for six weeks or three months or whatever period of time I would be on a 'health kick.' "
"We're always sharing ab workouts, and how far we ran, and we push each other," Marshall said. "It's a different environment in the group because everybody is really focused about losing weight or getting fit and not just casually going to the gym. I feel like we learned a lot through the program, so we're just better able to have a conversation about fitness."
To promote adherence to exercise or active lifestyles among college-age women, activities must be enjoyable, easily accessible and provide social opportunities, McDowell and Shinew said.
Nineteen of the 20 women who began the program finished it, a success rate that Shinew attributed to Dorsey and McDowell's leadership and their serving as role models for the participants.
"Courtney and I both changed our dietary habits and worked out, and it's not easy at my age to start running long distance," said McDowell, who will turn 38 on April 29. "But that served as a motivation also, because the students saw that we were practicing what we were teaching."
McDowell also confronted a concern that prevents some African-American women from exercising - the fear that they'll sweat heavily and ruin their hairstyles, Washington said.
"We're all black girls and the 'I-don't-want-to-sweat-my-weave-out' (concern) - that is so real," Washington said. "But professor McDowell said, 'Your heart is more important than your hair, and there's ways around it.'
"I like my weave and like to be flawless," Washington added. "But I can tie it up, go run my miles at the gym and call it a day."
Freshman, sophomore and juniors were recruited for the program so that the researchers could track their progress and evaluate the intervention's long-term impact.
Data collection for the study is ongoing, but the preliminary analyses indicate that all of the women improved their cardiovascular fitness, increased their physical activity levels and developed confidence in their ability to make better nutritional choices, McDowell said.
McDowell plans to recruit another cohort of students and offer the program again in early 2015.
The pilot program was funded by a grant from the Center on Health, Aging and Disability in the College of Applied Health Sciences.