Warehouse Point

Camp HealthRock increased kids’ knowledge of healthful
behaviors by 40 percent during the five-day session.

How do you make a junior wellness program sound like fun? For the staff of Lehigh Valley Hospital Center for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention, part of the answer was to come up with a catchy name. According to the center’s promotional literature, Camp HealthRock is a “place right out of history.” More than 30 fitness professionals help make the camp a summer adventure, and an affordable one at that. About $100 covers everything, including a Camp HealthRock T-shirt.

“We didn’t set out to mimic the Flintstones,” says operations and marketing manager Gregory L. Salem. “Copyright laws can be rough on you if you do that, even when the subject matter falls under public domain. Instead the name ‘Camp HealthRock’ is simply an attempt to come up with a name that sounds fun, like ‘Hardrock Cafe.’ We figured the youngsters would be more inclined to get involved with Camp HealthRock than they would in something like ‘Camp Healthy Kids.’ Functionally, the two amount to exactly the same thing, but the second name doesn’t sound like nearly as much fun as the first.”

Camp HealthRock is a five-day summer education program in which children ages 7 to 9 and 10 to 12 are the primary participants. Daily activities last from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The itinerary mixes fun with the basics of wellness, from health and fitness to safety and self-improvement.

The course work is designed to demonstrate improved proficiency in specific areas of health knowledge (i.e., growth and development, general nutrition, environmental health, safety, self-esteem and body image, consumer health, stress management and tobacco use and abuse). Tests are administered before and after camp attendance. According to Salem, the results of the final test usually show a measurable improvement, particularly in the area of aerobic endurance.

“In the pretests, you have an average score of about 43 percent,” he says. “But with the post-test, the scores jump to 84 percent. That’s pretty remarkable, as it represents an average improvement rate of almost 40 percentage points.”

Since the program’s inception two years ago, each summer session has either sold out or attracted sufficient participation to cover operating expenses. Since at least 50 percent of last year’s participants returned this year, more and improved HealthRock sessions are being planned for the immediate future.

Tags: education, program, wellness