Being Well at Yale’s winter wellness challenge, Keep America Active, ended on the last days of winter, and yet participants didn’t let the cold New England weather stop them.
Keep America Active is a holistic lifestyle program that draws upon the excitement of seeing and learning about new places and people by visiting famous landmarks across the United States. In this interactive six-week online wellness tour, the goal was to log 25+ points/week by recording one or more of three health behaviors: exercise minutes or steps, no sugar-sweetened beverages and daily gratitude. Of the three health behaviors, Leela Dodda of Juanito’s Team felt that the challenge helped her to keep track of how many sugar-sweetened beverages she had in a day, which she felt was very valuable. She also felt the reminder to show daily gratitude was helpful as well.
In addition to tracking health behaviors, participants could also find information on a variety of wellbeing topics from nutrition and fitness to stress reduction and delicious recipes through the daily tips and online articles. Other fun features like the community Wellness Wall, Thrive Thursdays, and destination trivia, helped to create a unique and interactive program experience. Paty Morales de Tirado of Juanito’s Team shared that “this challenge helped many of us [to be healthier] and at the same time gave us a chance to help each other. I found the support and push of the team the most valuable part of this challenge, especially on days that one does not feel up to doing much.”
The six-week challenge which went from sea to shining sea began on February 5 and ended on March 18. With nearly 1200 participants registered for the challenge and almost half meeting the goal of 25 points per week, competition became fierce towards the end of the six weeks. To make logging health behaviors as easy as possible, participants could sync their activity tracking device for easy tracking. They could also track on the go with a free mobile app.
Annmarie Liapakis of team Transplant Yale sums up the overarching goal of the challenge well, “For me, the team approach provided the inspiration and support to make positive daily changes towards health and wellbeing that I plan to maintain now beyond the end of the competition.” And that is what it’s all about!
Prizes go to the top three performing teams and one randomly selected team in a drawing. The prizes are made up from a selection of gear from Trailblazer’s New Haven in the Broadway district, one of the shops at Yale.
The top performing teams are:
#1 Catch Us If You Can
- Donalee Slater
- Deborah Pallock
- Teresa Corato
- Kelly Anderson
- Robert Villani
- Jeffrey Brown
#2 Transplant at Yale
- Sukru Emre
- Annmarie Liapakis
- Danielle Haakinson
- Elizabeth Cohen
- Kara Ventura
- Susan Rubman
- David Mulligan
#3 Now Get To Steppin’
- Bethany Hayes
- Michael Stringer
- Elaine Culmo
- Kristine Kinsella
- Suzanne Stringer
- Sue Penney
- Elizabeth Tomasco
Drawing winners:
#11 Juanito’s Team
- Margarita Valhondo-Falcon
- Jose Cisnero Trigo
- Patricia Morales De Tirado
- Julian Tirado-Rives
- Saul Jaime-Figueroa
- Teresa Lara-Jaime
- Vladas Oleinikovas
- Leela Dodda
Being Well at Yale sponsors a wellness challenge annually so if you missed it this year, keep an eye out for 2019!
For more information, please contact beingwell@yale.edu.