Vounteering to improve your health - March 2009

Did you know...Volunteering at school could improve your health?

The Experience Corps program in Baltimore, Maryland, designed a health intervention to increase physical activity in older adults and simultaneously improve the academic outcomes of children. Previously inactive older adults were placed in public elementary schools as classroom volunteers and followed for over three years.  Older African-American women who spent 15 hours a week or more helping out in classrooms were significantly more physically active than their peers who didn't engage in volunteer activity. 

Dr. Erwin Tan of the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health and his team compared the study participants to 150 women of similar socioeconomic status, age, and health who were not engaging in volunteer activities, and found the volunteers consistently burned 50 percent more calories per week in physical activity.

Experience Corps now places older people, aged 65 to 86 in public elementary schools in 20 US cities, including Baltimore.

What Does CPC recommend?

There is compelling evidence supporting the benefits of increased regular physical activity – even light activity - in older adults.  Social research strongly supports that older people have the potential to make substantial contributions to our society.  As our population gets older and lives longer, programs like this one that help older people become more active while helping others will be increasingly important. The findings support the popular idea that people of all ages can benefit from regular exercise and interacting with one another.   Maybe you know someone who is resistant to the concept of exercise, but who might benefit from “going back to school”?

The study cited above was published in The Journals of Gerontology, Jan.29, 2009.