You would say Sabrina Plattner, MEd, has well being and wellness in her DNA.
Plattner, a senior well being educator within the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, grew up in Tucson, the daughter of Heather and David Alberts, MD. Her father joined the Faculty of Drugs – Tucson in 1975 and, a 12 months later, helped discovered the UArizona Cancer Center, the place he developed one of many nation’s high most cancers prevention and management applications. He served as middle director from 2005 to 2013 and created the Skin Cancer Institute in 2006. A Regents Professor and Director Emeritus, he retired in 2015.
Plattner’s mom, Heather, based Better Than Ever, a health coaching and fundraising program designed to assist make strolling, operating or biking a daily half life. This system raised funds to assist Most cancers Heart analysis and medical trials with an emphasis on breast and gynecologic cancers. A former center college instructor, Heather labored tirelessly to advertise well being and health and championed feminine fairness in STEM. In 1978, she launched the New Frontiers Program with funding from the Arizona Division of Schooling. New Frontiers offered constructive instructional applications to encourage non-traditional profession exploration for younger ladies, together with within the well being sciences.
With mother and father like that, it was virtually inevitable Plattner would pursue a profession in well being and wellness. Right this moment, her work entails growing vitamin, health and wellness curriculum, associated applications and neighborhood initiatives to stop childhood weight problems in Tucson. She does this not solely as a part of the Zuckerman Faculty of Public Well being’s Well being Promotion Sciences Division, but additionally in collaboration with establishments and organizations throughout the nation.
Plattner’s efforts embody the Faculty of Public Well being’s Healthy Schools Tucson, a partnership with space faculties to offer well being and wellness classes to kids. Domestically, she serves as co-chair of Activate Tucson, a place she shares with Annemarie Medina, MBA, director of company and neighborhood relations for UArizona Well being Sciences. Activate Tucson is an advocacy coalition that unites space companies, teams and folks devoted to well being and wellness in southern Arizona.
Activate Tucson and its Tucson Little one Well being Working Group are stakeholder companions within the Catalyzing Communities to Prevent Obesity initiative, a nationwide research led by Boston’s Tufts College. The initiative seeks to stop childhood weight problems and foster wholesome communities in 10 cities together with Tucson.
Plattner is humble about her involvement, however happy with the heritage behind it.
“My mother and father had been very concerned with prevention within the space of well being and wellness,” she mentioned. “My upbringing caught with me as a younger grownup and has carried with me by way of my life.”
Serving to children set up wholesome habits
Plattner earned her grasp’s diploma in elementary training and well being promotion from Lesley College, close to Boston, after finishing her undergraduate research at Northern Arizona College. She acquired her begin at UArizona in 2004 with Healthy Children Arizona, a well being, wellness and disease-prevention program centered on vitamin, bodily exercise and solar security.
Via Wholesome Youngsters Arizona, a partnership between the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Division of Dietary Sciences and the UArizona Most cancers Heart, she met her supervisor and mentor Cynthia Thomson, PhD, RDN, a Distinguished Professor with management roles on the middle and each faculties. Through the 10 years Plattner labored for Wholesome Youngsters Arizona, she coordinated outreach to elementary, center and a few excessive faculties, reaching about 25,000 college students.
Subsequent, she joined the Pima Council on Growing older, the place she oversaw CATCH Wholesome Habits. The nationwide program combats weight problems by partaking adults aged 50 and older as volunteers and mentors to show lifelong wholesome habits to children in grades Okay-5. In 2016, Plattner returned to the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences and UArizona Cooperative Extension to coordinate the Arizona Health Zone, previously often known as the Arizona Vitamin Community and Supplemental Vitamin Help Program – Schooling (SNAP-Ed).
“I used to have a look at my mother and, suppose, ‘Wow, she has a extremely cool job.’ I by no means thought I’d be doing comparable work with just a little completely different magnitude, however right here I’m. I like what I do.”Sabrina Plattner, MEd
Two years later she rejoined Dr. Thomson on the Faculty of Public Well being’s Zuckerman Family Center for Prevention and Health Promotion to move the Childhood Obesity Prevention Initiative. The initiative, funded by Frank Marcus, MD, a College of Medicine – Tucson Professor Emeritus and previous cardiology chief, consists of Wholesome Colleges Tucson and Wildcat Marathoners.
In early 2020, 1,100 college students from 4 space elementary faculties participated in Wildcat Marathoners, hosted with Cooperative Extension and Southern Arizona Roadrunners (SAR). This system inspired college kids to log miles at recess to achieve half or full marathon distances of 13.1 or 26.2 miles. Collaborating college students had been invited to SAR’s FitKidz 1-mile enjoyable run on the UArizona Mall, and all college students who accomplished at the least 12.1 miles throughout this system acquired a purple superhero cape after operating their final mile on campus.
“The cape has a giant UArizona emblem on it, and the children find it irresistible,” Plattner mentioned, including that 112 college students acquired capes in 2020. “We really had 17 children, ages 5 to 14, present up on the Thanksgiving Cross Nation race at Reid Park final fall. Different children and oldsters requested concerning the capes. They thought they had been so cool. All of them wished them!”
Wildcat Marathoners paused in the course of the pandemic however was reinstated nearly in fall 2021 by way of the Primavera Foundation’s Las Abuelitas After-School Program. Plattner mentioned she hopes to reignite in-person Wildcat Marathoners occasions post-pandemic.
Combining training and outreach
UArizona college students enrolled in two of Plattner’s programs, “Public Well being for Neighborhood Wellness” and “Public Well being for Faculty and Neighborhood Based mostly Childhood Weight problems Prevention Programming,” design lessons for middle schoolers as a part of Wholesome Colleges Tucson. Fundamental classes middle on health and vitamin utilizing U.S. Division of Agriculture MyPlate and Dietary and Physical Activity Guidelines. Different classes, like “Sugar Busters,” “Portion Distortion” and “Me, Myself & I,” goal issues to keep away from (sodas, sweet and different sweets), rethink (overeating) or reframe (wholesome physique form and measurement self-imaging) for a extra constructive outlook.
Classes additionally cowl social media and display screen time moderation, the risks of smoking and vaping, and self-care for stress. The stress lesson, which was developed first, facilities on COVID-19, explaining what it’s and the science behind social distancing, masking, testing and vaccines.
“Stress performs an enormous position in illness, psychological well being and weight problems,” Plattner mentioned, including that the results of stress had been amplified in the course of the pandemic. “The stress lesson was developed to mitigate misinformation and cut back the fear kids skilled right now.”
All the teachings had been created to be culturally related for Tucson’s various inhabitants. They’re taught at St. Peter and Paul Faculty with plans to broaden to extra faculties sooner or later.
“I really feel very lucky these childhood weight problems initiatives I helped begin and create are nonetheless going and making headway by way of the pandemic, when virtually every thing was digital and on-line,” Plattner mentioned. “The factor that’s actually nice concerning the Wholesome Colleges Tucson program is we’re staying related with children about present points arising of their lives.”
Subsequent, Plattner, Dr. Thomson and Jennifer Bea, PhD, co-director of the Physique Composition Lab on the UArizona Collaboratory for Metabolic Disease Prevention and Treatment, plan to broaden a neighborhood partnership with Head Begin preschool applications to incorporate Head Begin applications throughout southern Arizona. It additionally entails mother or father, pediatrician and nurse coaching on childhood weight problems prevention.
As a part of the Catalyzing Communities alliance, they’re getting ready a communitywide marketing campaign to persuade taxpayers to dedicate a portion of accessible college tax credit to colleges and faculty districts in much less prosperous areas. That is seen as a straightforward, cost-neutral approach to fund extracurricular actions that promote baby wellness and offset college funding disparities that may result in elevated weight problems in underserved areas.
Plattner will get wistful serious about how her mother and father’ careers, her mom’s specifically, and her personal have paralleled one another.
“I used to have a look at my mother and, suppose, ‘Wow, she has a extremely cool job,’” she mentioned. “She’d go to completely different locations on daily basis and do all this attention-grabbing and impactful stuff. I by no means thought I’d be doing comparable work with just a little completely different magnitude, however right here I’m. I’m going out to neighborhood facilities, faculties, conferences with neighborhood companions and occasions in the identical primary capability of prevention to assist create a wholesome neighborhood. I like what I do. I really feel grateful I’m on this place and in a position to be of service and to see the affect in our neighborhood.”
