By Shannon Turgeon
Photography by Rayni Shiring/University of Pittsburgh
Students from three of the University of Pittsburgh's health sciences schools teamed up with Special Olympics Pennsylvania to collect health data for Project ALL STAR, a new initiative designed to analyze how Special Olympics programming improves the health and well-being of its athletes.
Project ALL STAR, which stands for Active Life and Longevity: Special Olympics Transforming Athlete Results, is a longitudinal study involving athletes with intellectual and developmental disabilities across six states. Athletes who sign up for Project ALL STAR participate in surveys, focus groups and fitness assessments that will measure their physical, socioemotional and mental health over several years.
Project ALL STAR’s first event in the Special Olympics Pennsylvania’s Three Rivers region took place on Saturday, May 17. The event brought together 36 student volunteers from the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, School of Medicine, School of Public Health, and the exercise science program in the School of Education.
Eleven athletes completed several physical fitness tests to measure details such as strength, flexibility and coordination.
The volunteers staffed six fitness stations; served as “buddies” for athletes as they escorted them through completing the assessments; provided demonstrations and set up FitBits for athletes to use throughout the project. Students were also responsible for measuring and recording details such as the height, weight and blood pressure of each athlete.
Beyond data collection, volunteering with Project ALL STAR gives students the opportunity to connect with, and learn more about providing health care to, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Kevin Conley, chair and associate professor of the Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition and associate dean for undergraduate studies, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, recruited the cohort of Pitt students to assist with the event.
“The goal was to take an interprofessional approach here. The School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is very interprofessional by nature given all the different programs we have, but I knew this would be a great opportunity for public health and exercise science students to be involved as well, so we reached out to invite them to join us,” said Conley, who has volunteered with Special Olympics Pennsylvania for more than 25 years.
The group of student volunteers grew organically from there.
“I saw early on that students from the medical school were signing up, so clearly the word was getting around and they must have been finding out through their friends,” Conley continued.
One of the goals of collecting this data is to gather information proving that there is a direct link between athletes participating in the Special Olympics and a marked improvement in their health.
“The whole idea is to encourage more people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to participate in Special Olympics because we were able to demonstrate the positive impact of that,” said Conley.
As Project ALL STAR grows, there could be additional opportunities for Pitt Health Sciences students to become further involved through program and data analysis.
“Once we've gone through a second iteration of testing, we’ll have data that we can analyze to see where the differences exist and where improvements were made. So, I think those opportunities exist down the line,” said Conley.
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