ALL ABOUT HEALTH: John Moriarity Football’s Stewart Willey (left) and Patrick Coleman (far right) with HealthLAB’s Whitney Hoosan, Lesley Versteegh and Nicole Boyd.
THE nation’s leading medical research institute has brought it’s pop-up HealthLAB to Tennant Creek for the very first time this week to encourage local youth to make positive health choices.
The Menzies School of Health Research’s free, fun and informative HealthLAB sessions began on Wednesday evening at YouthLinx where they joined forces with the John Moriarty Football program.
There was hiccup with freight on Wednesday, so much of the equipment did not arrive in time for the session.
But for the rest of the week, the interactive stations covered nutrition, the dangers of smoking, alcohol and other drugs and being healthy and fit.
The Nutrition Station features a Bioimpedance machine which measures fat versus muscle percentage and shows participants the sugar content of popular drinks, while youth took smokerlyzer breath tests to measure their carbon dioxide in expired breath at the Smoke-Free Station.
The Time Machine Station is a iPad-based activity showing facial changes and ageing due to smoking, alcohol or poor diet compared with natural ageing, and the Exercise Station measures upper and lower muscle strength with a jump and grip strength activity.
HealthLAB Manager Nicole Boyd said the pop-up clinics were first initiated from the research conducted by the institute where it was realised people were going to be at their healthiest and have the healthiest children by getting our teenagers to be healthy and not wait until later in their lives.
“We really do target kids and young adults so we visit a lot festivals and sports carnivals,” she said.
“We have a range of stations and on our next visit – we will being an ultrasound station where participants can look at their organs, see their heart beating and moving and water going to their stomachs for example.
“It’s more about learning what all the results mean, what you can do with that information and asking yourself what is that one small thing you can do to make yourself healthier – whether it’s not having that one can of soft drink and having a water instead.”
Yesterday the HealthLab team visited the Tennant Creek High School and attended the YDU football training at the Karguru Oval.
They will be at the The Hub today to engage with youth service providers.
