Submitted by: Ron Kirk, MA, DC

Position: Straighten Up Facilitator

APHA Chiropractic Health Care Section members and leadership have played pivotal roles in the development and promulgation of the Straighten Up and Just Start Walking Initiatives. Begun as a simple concept at an ACC-RAC conference in 2004, Straighten Up has gone global, gaining scores of partnering organizations and health promotion networks around the world.

APHA-CHC Section members John Hyland, Meridel Gatterman and Ron Kirk served on the original five-member seed panel for the initiative. Seed panelists saw the need for a simple procedure to promote healthy posture in an increasingly sedentary society with rapidly increasing rates of spinal disability. Because of the great global burden of spinal disability and a populist grassroots vision, the Posture Pod from Straighten Up America has now been translated into 15 languages.

Realizing that inactivity and sedentary lifestyles are damaging to people’s spinal and overall health, the original seed panel reconvened in 2010 and expanded to create and promulgate additional activity modules. John Hyland’s seminal concept of Just Start Walking is gaining traction as a global program through partners such as the Bone and Joint Decade, the World Federation of Chiropractic, World Spine Care, the Alliance of Health Promotion, the Forum for Health, and the WHO Health Promotion Unit. Additionally, health ministries in Nigeria and Tonga have embraced Just Start Walking and are using it as a central theme for national campaigns to promote activity. In addition to spine disorders, inactivity increases risk for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, many forms of cancer, depression, Alzheimer’s disease and other debilitating disorders.

Below is a list of a few of our many grassroots collaborative breakthroughs with Straighten Up and Just Start Walking in 2010 and 2011:

·         Completion of the Just Start Walking Delphi process and establishment of Just Start Walking websites, Facebook pages and APPS.

·         Incorporation of Just Start Walking on multiple partners’ websites.

·         Participation of entire health ministries in Just Start Walking healthy activity campaigns.

·         Publication of qualitative research related to Just Start Walking.

·         Development of new Straighten Up activity modules through a continuing Delphi process.

·         Development of an online health promotion educational module through peoplesuni.org.

To learn more about Straighten Up and Just Start Walking, please visit, www.wfc.org, www.straightenupamerica.com, or check out what chiropractors in Australia are doing with Just Start Walking at http://www.juststartwalking.com.au

Ron Kirk, MA, DC