Faculty of Kinesiology

Dr. Shawnda Morrison is a Certified Exercise Physiologist, originally from Canada, who has been active in the field of kinesiology and sport science for over 20 years. She got her start as an undergraduate student studying for a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology from the University of New Brunswick in Canada, and continued there to gain her Masters of  Science in Sport and Exercise Science under the supervision of Dr. Gordon Sleivert and Dr. Stephen Cheung. Shawnda then moved to Dunedin, New Zealand to complete her PhD in Environmental exercise physiology at the University of Otago under the supervision of Dr. Jim Cotter and Dr. Philip Ainslie, focusing on the effects of cardiovascular strain in the heat. Shawnda moved back to Canada where she was in charge of running bedrest projects in Toulouse, France for the Canadian and European Space agencies. This space science work is what ultimately brought her to Slovenia, where Shawnda was recruited by Dr. Igor Mekjavic to the Institut Jozef Stefan  to run a series of bedrest+hypoxia studies for ESA at the Slovenian Olympic Training Facility Planica, located at the foot of the Julian Alps.

ABSTRACT

According to the World Health Organisation, cardiovascular disease has become the leading cause of death worldwide in the 21st century due to changes in lifestyle, and in particular, the rise of physical inactivity, which itself is listed at the #4 contributor to mortality globally. In spite of this, obesity trends continue to rise, and inactivity levels in children and youth continue to soar, with very little exception.  One country which has managed to reverse these negative trends in child physical activity, physical fitness and obesity rates is the Republic of Slovenia.  

In this colloquium talk, I will briefly outline the worldwide trends in physical activity data as it relates to children and youth, with particular emphasis on the EU and Canada, and give a short history on the evolution of Slovenia’s national fitness surveillance monitoring system, called SLOfit.  The SLOfit system is the largest continuous longitudinal database of child fitness in the world. We will look at some of the challenges of operating this system, the tests they perform, and some suggestions for future work, including how to assess the impact environmental factors (e.g. self-isolation, climate change) will have on the ability of children to maintain and improve their fitness across their lifespan.

Contact Dr. Jonathon Edwards jonathon.edwards@unb.ca  for link to attend.