It was during the third year of my Ph.D. work at Boston University when I received a call from my undergraduate mentor at the University of Puerto Rico, and now colleague and friend, Julio Morales, Ph.D. Dr. Morales had a suggestion, he said “you should apply for the ACSM’s leadership program for minorities.” He explained what he knew about the program and guided me to where I could find more information about it. He was referring to the ACSM’s Leadership and Diversity Training Program (LDTP). The LDTP is a program aimed to support, mentor, retain and guide members from racial/ethnic minority groups throughout the ACSM Fellowship path.

In 2010 during the ACSM Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, I was part of the cohort selected as mentees for the 2010-2011 LDTP. I remember entering a private room at a restaurant near the Oriole’s baseball field, the iconic Camden Yards, and meeting a group of young individuals and their mentors that today I call brothers and sisters. Later that evening it was time for me to meet my LDTP mentor, one of the most incredibly humble human beings that I’ve ever met in my life, ACSM past president Larry Armstrong, PhD., FACSM. Since that moment Dr. Armstrong truly put me “under his wing” and there’s no major event, personal or professional, that I don’t receive a call or an email from him. As a mentor, Dr. Armstrong offered meaningful support and guidance when I asked, checked on my personal and professional successes and setbacks always with clear boundaries but genuine comfort and true professional congeniality.

In 2011, as a mentor, Dr. Armstrong asked me to develop a symposium with him for the New England ACSM chapter annual meeting, and it was an amazing experience. In 2016, I consulted him when I was offered a postdoctoral position. In 2017, Dr. Armstrong called when hurricane María devastated my beautiful Puerto Rico. And in 2019 he sent one of the most encouraging replies I’ve ever received in my life, when I asked him via email for a recommendation letter toward my fellowship application.

As you can tell by now, the role of mentors has been a very special one in my professional development. So let me introduce you another mentor and friend that ACSM and the LDTP gave me the opportunity to have in my life: ACSM past president, NiCole Keith, PhD., FACSM. I met Dr. Keith as the organizer of the LDTP in 2010 during that evening in Baltimore. Right away I realized how much she cared, not only for the program, but for all of us mentees, individually and as a collective. It was clear by her passionate speech that her goal was not only for ACSM to become a more diverse organization within its membership, but within its leadership as well.

It was Dr. Keith during the 2019 conference in Orlando who stopped me while I was walking toward the convention center and asked me “when are you applying for fellowship?” I gathered my thoughts, and with a nervous voice I replied with another question, “Can I get a recommendation letter from you?” Later that year I submitted my application for fellowship with recommendations from past president, Dr. Armstrong, and (at the time) president-elect, Dr. Keith.

Today, I’m an assistant professor, an ACSM Fellow and mentor in the LDTP. I have been a candidate for the Health Equity, Inclusion and Diversity trustee position on ACSM’s Board of Trustees, co-chair of the ACSM Minority Health and Research Special Interest Group and member of the ACSM Membership Committee. Currently I am co-chair of the Diversity Network communication sub-committee and was recently appointed as a member of the ACSM Communication and Public Information Committee. All these great opportunities were possible thanks to my participation on the LDTP.

The LDTP is not only a program where participants engage in meetings and experiences with current ACSM leaders. It’s also a program that promotes collegial and fraternal relationships among its participants and solidify the path toward a diverse and inclusive leadership of our beloved ACSM. I encourage my fellow members, colleagues and those in position of guidance and mentorship, to get involved and promote this great opportunity for your underrepresented students and mentees.

Apply for the LDTP**

Apply to be a LDTP Mentor

*“Camínalo” means “walk it” in Spanish.
**Must be logged in with ACSM ID to access application.

Mario A. Muñoz, Ph.D., FACSM, is an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, where he coordinates the Human Performance and Wellness Management Program. He is an ACSM Leadership & Diversity Training Program alumnus and has been an ACSM Fellow since 2019. Dr. Muñoz served as co-chair of the ACSM Minority Health and Research Special Interest Group. Currently, Dr. Muñoz serves on the ACSM Diversity Action Committee and ACSM Communication and Public Information Committee.

I presented an abstract at the  ACSM Annual Meeting for the first time this June. The morning of my poster session, as I walked through the giant room filled with research posters from labs all over the country (and even some international labs!), I was surprised to see a student already standing by my own. “I’ve been waiting for you,” they said. I hadn’t expected anyone to be even more excited than I was to talk about the project that I had been working on, but here they were. Throughout the rest of the poster session, I had the opportunity to speak with numerous students as well as some lab directors/PIs. What started out as something I had nervously anticipated for weeks turned into an enlightening and ultimately fun experience.

 

There are many benefits to presenting your research at a conference, one of the largest being the chance to connect with other researchers/clinicians within and outside of your discipline. When I started my PhD, I would hear my advisor and others in my lab talk about each paper we discussed with what seemed like an inherent familiarity with the authors and the work their lab was doing. I thought to myself, “how will I ever remember all of these details?” However, once I started attending conferences and meeting some of the individuals whose work I was reading, it suddenly became a lot easier. It’s an incredible opportunity to ask the questions you have or discuss your own research ideas with the scientists whose research formulated the basis for those ideas. Moreover, there are a ton of networking opportunities. During the poster session at the ACSM Annual Meeting, another student in my lab presented her research to a faculty member who was looking for a potential postdoctoral student.

Another critical component and huge benefit to presenting is gaining the skills to talk about your research to a variety of audiences. Being able to share your knowledge in a way that is both understandable and meaningful to a diverse group of scientists, clinicians and researchers as well as a lay audience is perhaps the most important skill for an impactful career in academia, research or industry. While you will put in a lot of work and maybe a little more stress than you’d like into preparing your presentation, the skills and opportunities (and maybe inspiration for your next project/dissertation!) that you gain as a result are worth it.

Want more information about presenting at the 2023 ACSM Annual Meeting in Denver, CO next year? Learn more here!

Emily F. Blake is a member of the ACSM Consumer Outreach Committee and a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research in the UMD Human Integrative Physiology Lab focuses on the role of sex hormones and reproductive aging in the relationship between inflammation and vascular function. When she isn’t in the lab, she likes to play soccer and hike with friends and hang out with her cats.

There is no doubt that childhood and adolescence are decisive periods to acquire healthy lifestyle behaviors, like being physically active and participating in a variety of sports. When youngsters acquire an active lifestyle, there is a greater probability they will maintain it throughout their lives. The Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance released the Global Matrix 4.0 on Oct. 24, 2022, which compared indicators of physical activity in children and adolescents from 57 countries on six continents. Globally, overall physical activity received a grade of “D,” indicating that we are succeeding with less than half of children and adolescents (27-33%). Thus, there is an urgent need to address strategies to increase physical activity levels in children and youth.

In general, children are more active than adults, and physical activity levels decline substantially during childhood and adolescence. This decrease in physical activity starts at very early ages (i.e., from the age of 5 years). Although boys of all ages spend more time being physically active than girls, they tend to have a similar declining trend in their physical activity. While the observed reduction in average levels of physical activity during childhood appears to be universal across populations, there is a general lack of understanding of the correlates associated with the decline.

In our study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise_®, we described longitudinal trends in physical activity in childhood and explored putative individual-level (fitness, BMI, motor coordination) and environmental-level (family socioeconomic status, school characteristics) correlates of these trends. The study was conducted among primary school children in Portugal and involved repeated measurements of children recruited into one of six overlapping age cohorts who were each followed for three years. Time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity was assessed using accelerometers, and children were instructed to wear the devices for seven consecutive days at each measurement period.   

We found that both boys and girls experienced linear declines in moderate to vigorous physical activity with advancing age, and that boys were more active than girls at all ages. On average, boys engage in 17 more minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per day than girls. We also found that children who had higher musculoskeletal fitness or had a lower body mass index had a less steep decline in moderate to vigorous physical activity. However, contrary to our initial expectations, no significant link was found between family socioeconomic status and the physical activity decline. Yet, from the common environment (school characteristics), greater school playground dimensions predicted a steeper decline in physical activity.

The results of our study provide relevant information to be considered when designing and implementing strategies to attenuate declining levels of physical activity in childhood. We suggest that physical education and sports participation programs should emphasize the development of fundamental motor skills together with providing ample opportunities for fitness-enhancing physical activity. The finding that greater playground dimensions were associated with a steeper decline in physical activity is counterintuitive and requires further exploration. As with any observational study, it was impossible to control for the effects of unmeasured variables on the observed associations.  

Sara Pereira earned a Ph.D. in sports sciences and specializes in sport, genetics and motor behavior. She is an assistant professor at Lusófona University in Lisboa, Portugal, and invited professor in the faculty of sport at the University of Porto in Porto, Portugal. Her research focuses on youth growth, motor development and lifestyle behaviors. She relies on a holistic interpretation of human development to best understand the intertwined relationships between individual and environmental characteristics that shape growth, motor development and lifestyle behaviors.

Peter T. Katzmarzyk, Ph.D., is professor and associate executive director for population and public health sciences at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, where he holds the Marie Edana Corcoran Endowed Chair in Pediatric Obesity and Diabetes. His research program focuses on physical activity and obesity, with a special emphasis on pediatrics and ethnic health disparities. Dr. Katzmarzyk is an ACSM fellow, chair of the ACSM Evidence-based Practice Committee, member of the ACSM Board of Trustees and recipient of the ACSM Citation Award.

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