Two U of T faculties join forces to boost mental and physical health of local seniors

siddiq22 — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:45:47 +0000

siddiq22 Fri, 07/28/2023 - 12:45

Cutline

Participants in the Work it Out, Talk it Out program, jointly created and run by U of T social work and kinesiology professors and students, stretch in their chairs at the Jane/Finch Centre (photo courtesy Work it Out, Talk it Out)

Bruce Grierson

Topic

Our Community

Community Engagement

Counselling

Exercise

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Mental Health

Subheadline

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education partner with community centre

Two University of Toronto faculties are teaming up on a new pilot project that aims to improve the physical and mental health of local seniors through a combination of exercise and talk therapy.

Partnering with the Jane/Finch Centre in northwest Toronto – a multi-service community centre focusing on poverty reduction – the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education developed the Talk It Out, Work It Out program for the centre’s clients, particularly seniors.

Graduate students from each faculty also contributed to the program’s curriculum.

Kinesiology students focused on the “Work It Out” section of the program, where participants do some basic exercise before moving on to the “Talk It Out” part, where trained Master of Social Work students shepherd the clients into small groups so they can share their thoughts and concerns to the degree and depth they choose.

Over seven 1.5-hour sessions, the participants’ anxieties are soothed and their comfort level rises through the combination of physical stress release and expert peer support.

Catherine Sabiston and Lin Fang

“We planned it this way so that seniors could first get activated through exercise,” says Lin Fang, associate professor of social work and Factor-Inwentash Chair in Children’s Mental Health at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

“Later on, as seniors were used to the Talk It Out section and needed more time for it, we switched it around so that they could have time to speak first. The program was designed to be fully integrated.”

The Talk It Out program was inspired by the growing mental health crisis during the pandemic, which hit marginalized communities hard.

Social work students were trained to provide free counselling sessions online or by phone, but Fang knew some seniors would remain resistant to the idea of counselling – even if it was free.

So she joined forces with Catherine Sabiston, a professor of exercise and sport psychology at the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education who holds a Canada Research Chair in physical activity and mental health. Sabiston had led a similar initiative called MoveU.HappyU – an exercise and mental-health coaching program overseen by KPE students from her lab to help U of T students.

Both sets of graduate students partnered on adapting their programming to meet the needs of the senior clients Fang had in mind.

They’ve since seen real progress during the sessions at the Jane/Finch Centre, where many of the seniors initially lamented the lack of social support in their lives. Not only do they now have the support of the Talk It Out, Work It Out facilitators, but participants have been coming together themselves – making new walking buddies and friendships beyond the sessions.

“That’s the best part of ‘talking it out,’” says Jane/Finch Centre program worker Sandra Anderson.

“Everyone has a story. Your story reflects what you’re going through, but I can identify with it, too. By talking, we’ve helped each other make it through another day.”

Read the full story at the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Read the full story at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Why are some athletes injury prone? Timothy Burkhart's research could offer clues

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 15:44:58 +0000

Why are some athletes injury prone? Timothy Burkhart's research could offer clues

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 09/01/2022 - 11:44

Cutline

NBA player Derrick Rose's struggle with knee injuries prompted U of T researcher Timothy Burkhart to wonder why some pro-level athletes seem injury-prone (photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Bruce Grierson

Topic

Breaking Research

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Research & Innovation

Sports

Women's College Hospital

From each according to their abilities, to each according to their knees – and hips.

Timothy Burkhart’s biomechanical research aims to help prevent injuries and rehab them quickly when they do happen – in varsity athletes and the rest of us.

Growing up, as he watched NBA small-forward Grant Hill go down with yet another ankle injury, or point guard Derrick Rose rip up one or the other knee again, Burkhart used to wonder: Why are some athletes injury-prone?

Timothy Burkhart

“It always amazed me that these athletes who have unlimited resources to stay healthy – the best doctors, the best trainers – some of them just … couldn’t,” says Burkhart, an assistant professor of orthopedic biomechanics in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE). “And unfortunately for some of them, that was the end of their career. So you have to ask why.

“Is it some way that they’re moving? Was there a vulnerability there that didn’t get picked up?”

Burkhart, who runs the biomechanics of orthopedics and sport medicine lab at U of T – in conjunction with the orthopedic surgeons of the University of Toronto Orthopaedic Sports Medicine group and his team of graduate students – engages in what you might call kinetic detective work. Which parts are most likely to fail, on whom, and why?

Two components of the human chassis especially susceptible to breakdown are hips and knees. Burkhart is looking at both joints in studies now running concurrently in his lab.

The hip research is concerned with something called femoroacetabular impingement syndrome (FAIS). In this disorder, which recently derailed the career of promising Leafs goaltending prospect Ian Scott, constant stress between the femur and the pelvis causes extra bone to grow, restricting movement and generating pain. Burkhart wants to better understand why this happens, and to prevent it from happening so much to so many. To that end, he and his team are recruiting athletes in a variety of sports that rely on heavy hip action – such as hockey, basketball and lacrosse.

By the time an athlete reaches competitive varsity level in these sports, they’ll have performed the same movement thousands of times. A slight biomechanical hitch in their form can compound over time. It’s the kind of thing that’s traditionally been difficult to detect. But Burkhart is bringing cutting-edge tools to the job.

Sample image from markerless motion-tracking system

In the lab, athletes simulate the game moves that put such ferocious stress on the hip – sprinting and cutting, or butterfly maneuvers. Motion-capture technology helps generate computer models that accurately estimate the forces on the hip, a non-invasive way to retrieve data that used to require intramuscular probes.

But even the best simulations can only ever get you so far – athletes just don’t move quite the same way in the lab as they do in competition. So, there’s a second dimension of Burkhart’s analysis.

“We’re really lucky that we have a markerless motion-tracking system,” he says. “We can set up cameras and videotape the athletes doing exactly what they would do while they’re playing.”

The combination of the two techniques – capturing force and movement data in the lab, and analyzing videotape of the players on court – produces an unprecedentedly granular level of analysis.

For reasons no one yet fully understands, FAIS hip injuries tend to be prevalent in female athletes. That’s partly why Burkhart is only recruiting women for the first trial of his hip study, which is a collaborate joint venture with Women’s College Hospital.

The same kinds of analyses are underway in the knee research – but this time with athletes of both genders.

Burkhart’s data may yield information we’ve never uncovered because he’s asking questions that have never really been asked. Are varsity athletes playing a different game than weekend warriors? Are they moving in very slightly different ways? Burkhart will compare the athletes to a control group, “our everyday healthy population that’s relatively active.”

What he learns should help both populations – on both the preventative and the rehabilitative side of things.

And that is ultimately the two-part endgame of Burkhart’s lab: early detection of vulnerabilities that could lead to injuries down the road, and evidence-based recommendations for improved rehab and return-to-activity strategies.

"We want to help athletes prolong their careers,” he says, “but the goal more generally is that everyone extends their mobility through their lifespan, and lives and plays pain-free and healthy.”