Beyond the Microscope

This post was written by Justine Fuga, an Outreach Coordinator at fitUnited Pittsburgh.

As a molecular biology student, I had been accustomed to looking at health through the lens of a microscope. I viewed health as the tiny molecules that make up your DNA and the chemical reactions that take place for the body to perform its vital functions. From the first day of service, I began to recognize that there is a much larger picture to health than that of the molecular scale.

For a child, I learned that a large part of their health is shaped by the hours between 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm Monday thru Friday. When children are not in school or at home, they are usually spending their time in an afterschool program. These programs provide children with the opportunity to get moving after a sedentary day in class and with a snack or meal before they return home. As the fitUnited Program Assistant, I connect afterschool programs with resources and services that allow the program to improve healthy eating and physical activity habits among the children they serve.

I had never before considered improving the health practices of afterschool sites as a point of impact for childhood health, let alone the unique and complex barriers to health that exist in this realm. Children don’t just look forward to play time and snack time, they need play time and snack time to compensate for the physical activity and nutritious foods that they may not receive during the school day or at home.

Even though afterschool providers understand the necessity for healthy meals and time devoted solely to physical activity, children still miss out on the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity and balanced meals. Some of the afterschool programs I work with are academically enriched, focusing heavily on homework and STEM lessons, placing physical activity lower on the priority list. Other programs literally cannot participate in physical activities because their program takes place in a church or cafeteria, with tables and other furniture in the way that the facility manager has prohibited them from moving. The meals served at a majority of afterschool sites are selected and served by the food vendor of the facility that the program is housed in. So even if the afterschool staff wants to serve healthier food options, only the food vendor has the final say on the matter.

Every day, I work to provide all of the tools needed to empower afterschool providers to effect healthy changes within their programs. Part of that is empowering them to advocate for policy changes within their organization or program facility that provide them with the ability to make physical activity and nutritious meals a priority in their program. Children rely on adults as advocates, especially afterschool providers, to make decisions that positively impact their health. But when the afterschool provider is limited by organizational policies, they lose power to make those decisions, ultimately increasing a child’s risk for poor health outcomes.  

My service with National Health Corps has challenged me to look at health beyond the microscope. By stepping away from the lab bench, I have been able to see the significant influence afterschool programs have on childhood health. The health habits that children form through afterschool programs do not exist only between the hours of 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm Monday thru Friday; they exist for the rest of their lifetime, becoming as permanent as the genes within their DNA. Workplace and organizational policies should not dilute the importance of physical activity and meal quality in afterschool programs; rather, they should be implemented with these attributes at their focal point, especially since a child’s lifetime of health is at stake.