SEMINAR: Enhancing Girls' Health: How to Merge Sport Research with Public Policy

Enhancing Girls' Health: How to Merge Sport Research with Public Policy

Joint seminar of the Centre for Girls' and Women's Health and Physical Activity and the Centre for Canadian Sport Policy: April 20

Presenter: Don Sabo, Professor of Health Policy at D’Youville College in Buffalo, USA

Topic: Enhancing Girls' Health: How to Merge Sport Research with Public Policy.

Date: Friday April 20, 2007,

Time: 1 – 2:30 pm

Location: Athletic Centre, Faculty of PE & Health, 55 Harbord Street, Toronto, (Benson Wing, Lecture Hall 307)

Dr. Sabo's presentation focuses on a variety of nationally-scaled research initiatives that have confirmed links between sports and girls' health. A number of collaborative strategies are also identified that mobilize mass media coverage in order to produce extensive educational and policy impacts. Subtopics include:

-- Strategic collaborations between academic researchers and nonprofit organizations such as the Women's Sports Foundation and Barr Foundation (Boston, MA).

-- Key findings concerning the interfaces between athletic participation and girls' health.

-- A conceptual model for understanding sport as a real and potential public health asset for girls.

-- Strategies for linking knowledge production to health education.

-- Steps for moving research-based analysis "off the shelf" and into policy circles.


PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

Don Sabo, Ph.D.

Don Sabo, Ph.D. is a Professor of Health Policy at D’Youville College in Buffalo, New York. He founded and directs the Center for Research on Physical Activity, Sport & Health, and he serves as Research Director for the Women’s Sports Foundation. He is a recognized expert on gender relations and has been writing and lecturing about issues including physical activity and health, gender equity in athletics, sport and masculinity, and men’s violence since 1980. He is considered a leader in the development of social scientific study of men and masculinities, particularly in the areas of sport and health.


Much of Professor Sabo’s recent research activity focuses on the social and health correlates of sports and physical activity, and particularly how they interface with gender. He has co-authored many nationwide research reports including Her Life Depends On It: Physical Activity and the Health and Well-Being of American Girls (2004), Health Risks and the Teen Athlete (2001), The Women’s Sports Foundation Report: Sport and Teen Pregnancy (1998), The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports report Physical Activity & Sport in the Lives of Girls (1997), The Women’s Sports Foundation Gender Equity Report Card: A Survey of Athletic Opportunity in American Higher Education (1997), Race, Ethnicity, and Nation in Televised International Athletic Events (1995), Sports and Fitness in the Lives of American Working Women (1993), and The Women's Sports Foundation Report: Minorities in Sport (1989).