Own Your Own Health challenge

It’s Ville Platte versus Opelousas.
Rudy Macklin, director of the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, said, “I went down the road to Opelousas and had the same talk with them. I told Mayor Jennifer Vidrine, I want to see if Ville Platte can challenge Opelousas to see who can accumulate the most steps, and the losing mayor would have to buy the winning mayor a healthy dinner and wear a t-shirt from that town’s high school.”
Macklin was the guest speaker at the January 3 Ville Platte Rotary Club meeting.
“When I took this job in 1992, I did a fitness assessment test, not only with children but also adults in several parishes around the state.
In 1992, we knew there was going to be a major obesity problem in the state of Louisiana, mainly because we love to eat, we love to go to festivals and have a good time and we are very short on physical activity.”
Macklin said that instead of putting funds he receives from the federal government sponsorships and other in-kind donations, into education and prevention of health issues like heart diseases, stroke, certain cancers, respiratory illness, he puts them all into obesity education and prevention
“I needed to put my dollars into one health issue, and that is obesity because obesity is linked to all of these (the aforementioned health issues),” Macklin said. “If I can do something about obesity, or we can do something about obesity in this state, it will solve all those other health problems.”
Macklin said the hardest part of his job is motivating the masses to participate in physical activity and make healthy food choices.
Macklin’s solution to changing behaviors is the Own Your Own Health Program. The program, a combination of another health program with additions by Macklin, is designed to get individuals to take responsibility for their own health and have fun at the same time.
Individuals participants and teams can register for the free program at www.dhh.louisiana.gov
The program is slated to run from January 23 through April 23. The first 1,000 people to sign up for this year will get a free pedometer. There will also be a drawing for a weekly prize.
Once an individual has created a profile in the online tool, they will be able to enter and track physical activity and nutrition, and participants can earn points by achieving milestones in an activity. The program then converts activities into “steps,” which is how progress is measured.
Individuals and teams can also sign up for challenges through the tool, and this will pit them against other individuals and teams, like Ville Platte and Opelousas. Each team will be able to view the rankings of other teams that are registered for the same challenge.