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Wednesday, 18 May 2011

When young cancer patients are given the all-clear, it is not always a smooth transition back to their ‘normal' lives.

Many of them have spent much of their lives in hospital and they have lost fitness and physical skills. They are often fatigued and out of condition, sometimes with balance and coordination difficulties.

Exercise physiologist and UWA PhD candidate Bonnie Furzer is co-ordinating a physical activity and health program for these children, to get them back on track and to help them to remain healthy.

Thriving is believed to be the only such program specifically developed for children and teenagers in Australia and, while providing enormous benefits for the children and their families, it also feeds into Bonnie's research investigating the role of exercise rehabilitation in recovery following cancer, and other paediatric research within the school.

Bonnie's research is co-supervised by Winthrop Professor Tim Ackland and Associate Professor Karen Wallman in the School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health (SSEH), and Clinical Associate Professor David Joske from the School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and funded by the Solaris Care Foundation.

"We used the School's very successful Unigym program as a guide," Bonnie said. "Kerry Smith, the Director of Unigym, and indeed the whole school, have been very supportive of the program."

Ten children are taking part in the first 10-week program. They spend a couple of hours once a week at UWA , learning general movement and specific skills, to help them return to being active participants in school sports and community activities.

The program leaders are volunteer graduate Sport Science students, and guests from various sporting clubs also volunteer. The emphasis is on having fun and building movement confidence in a supportive environment. There is a paediatric gym set up at SSEH, with child-sized exercise bikes, small apparatus and specialised weights equipment.

"The kids love the variety of activities and the specialised equipment," Bonnie said.

The children are either referred by their medical team at Princess Margaret Hospital or self-referred after seeing the Thriving brochures at PMH.

"The program has quite a big education component for the whole family, to try to protect the children from further illness," Bonnie said. "We encourage healthy eating and behaviour, with physical activities that can be incorporated into a family's lifestyle."

The program has been extended to include children with metabolic problems, such as obesity and diabetes, and hopes to expand to include mental health in the future. All children are given exercises and fun challenges to achieve in between their weekly on-campus sessions. A second group of 10 children will start later in the year and Bonnie hopes they can organise some weekend camps for children from rural areas.

Thriving is sponsored by UWA and the Tom Penrose Grant through Exercise and Sports Science Australia (ESSA), and supported by Canteen, and PMH.

Published in UWA News , 16 May 2011

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