within the hills of clay county, you’ll findsome of the youngest researchers anywhere.i did not think i would be part of study in4th grad because when you're in 4th grade, you're kind of still classified as a littlekid and not necessarily a scientist. but thanks to a research project between uk and the claycounty school district kids are indeed…scientists. you’ve got these little kids talking data,talking metrics.
Clay County Board Of Education, it all started with clay county native jillday, who studied kids in her hometown as part of her dissertation. we looked at their physicalactivity tracks, we also did body composition testing and we compared all of that to theirgrades so my interest started there. which inspiredday to team up with kinesiology colleague
jodi clasey, who’s research focus centersaround body composition…as well as physiology professor karyn esser. esser wanted to asknew questions in clay county based on her circadian rhythm research. what the circadianfield has taught us is that there are associations between disruptions and circadian health anddevelopment of chronic disease, in particular metabolic disease and cardiovascular disease.and, in particular clay county and many of the counties in appalachia have a much higherrate of these chronic diseases, and we thought wed be able to pick up on something in thekids, and that was really the question. they treated the project, which was supported throughthe ccts pilot funding program, as a partnership from the very beginning. let's write thisgrant together you know, let's come up with
ideas of how to truly make this a sustainablepartnership and not a one and done. school officials jumped at the opportunity for ukto work with 2 of their schools. manchester elementary, which is located in town witha large population and oneida elementary, one of smallest schools, that is in a ruralarea in a rural area. dr. allen approached me and said uk had an opportunity for someof my students in 4th and 5th grade if we were interested. and when i heard uk, i saidabsolutely, just the exposure that could get for our kids, i said, “bring it.†theycame and told you several days before what you were going to do and how it wasn't goingto hurt or anything like that. really they just had to continue their normal activities,they didn't have to do anything beyond what
they would do on a regular school day. thestudents from the very beginning they loved it, they were so excited! we were asking usto join us as research partners, serving as subjects by allowing us to take measures,height, weight, body composition. we also gave them a fit bit, they just wear it ontheir wrists and it takes all kinds of different physical activity measures and then they alsohad something called an i-button. it's a skin temperature monitoring system. and we hadthis little booklet thing that we kept track of things that we did during the day, likewhat we ate, what time we got up. each day they had to record their sleep time, whatthey had for breakfast, it was all on a schedule, sequences every day repetitive each day forday 1-7. all of those measurements resulted
in a lot of data. again with the help of theenthusiasm of the children, and the support staff at clay county, and just a great teamof people , we collected data on 142 children. but its what happened during the data collectionthat surprised even school officials. the kids really got into this and loved it. theyhad to be creative, they were aware of what was going on around them, and also at lunchtime they decided that they were going to exercise and walk around our track. ...walkinginto the classroom and seeing a kid doing jumping jacks in the classroom because theywant their fit bit to go farther than it was before... kids are competitive by nature andso they want to get those steps in get that activity in. but even after the fit bit wastaken away, there's more movement than there
was before it came, and even now they're awarewhen they go in the lunch room and they see healthy foods, they're more prone to pickthose up than what i had seen before. it made me see like the healthy stuff i ate and thenot so healthy stuff i ate. it made me feel more in shape. having an impact with the kidsat a time that this can impact their health the rest of their life, was very humblingto me. we could go in and tell you, you should be physically active, but when they join youin the project, and they join you in discovery and knowledge, it’s just much more powerful.it makes you feel better about yourself that you know that you have helped somebody. theywalked bolder. during the 7 day fit bit wearing, we had a home ball game, a football game.and i looked over and i saw all these kids
with their little wristbands and their i buttonsand they were like showing them to other kids like 'hey i'm doing this research, i'm a researcher.'one of the children when asked to give up part of the device wear by another child,said i can’t i am a university of kentucky researcher…he’s joined us, we’re notjust going down there and doing something to them, he’s joined us as a partner inresearch and that’s so key to this. the next step is analyzing the data and seeingwhere we are. that will hopefully help us do some interventions and tell these kidswhat we found because again we want these kids to be a part of this process. so theyhelped us collect the data but we want them to know what we found. it's not only aboutpromoting the science and discovery but it's
establishing long term relationships withthe community, they with uk community, we with the clay county community. i love partnerships,i love what it does for parents, i love all of that, but i keep coming back to this. ithas impacted our children because they see and they're a part of something bigger thanthemselves. but this story doesn't end here. as a reward for their research, the studentsearned a field trip to uk. and even after it was over, the concern of the kids everydayis 'when do we get to go to uk?' i just want that day at campus to be the beginning oftheir college aspirations. next month on uknow, part 2 of the story will explore the educationalimpacts this project is having and what it means for the future for these clay countykids. i'm just glad they picked us to do it
because i never really thought that i woulddo this i'm glad i did too!
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