Youth urged to join Step Up Challenge

Young people are being urged to take part in the Heart & Stroke Foundation’s Step Up Challenge, to improve their health and wellbeing in celebration of International Youth Day.

The initiative, running from August 8 to 12, encourages participants to get moving and track their footsteps using the Step Up app, and compete for prizes — all while raising awareness about the dangers of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Student advocate with the foundation, Ddjata Massiah, issued the call to action, saying the challenge embodies the spirit of this year’s International Youth Day theme, Youth Action for SDGs and Beyond. 

“For International Youth Day … it involves the youth taking [a stand] to promote the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations,” Massiah said on Friday. “One of the sustainable development goals … involves health and wellness, and we are doing our part here in Barbados for that sustainable goal with the Step Up Challenge.”

Youths, communities, members of parliament and policymakers are being invited to track their footsteps using the Step Up app.

“We want to not just talk about being active and living a healthier lifestyle but actually taking action,” Massiah explained. “The top male and the top female steppers would get a $50 gift card and… persons with more than 35 000 steps will gain Heart and Stroke Foundation merch as well as certificates.”

He stressed that regular exercise is a vital complement to good nutrition. “A healthier lifestyle starts with healthy eating, which segues into being physically active and living a healthier lifestyle as a whole in totality.”

Massiah warned that NCDs, such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, have become a major public health crisis. 

“Years ago, I was always told young people don’t have NCDs… that’s not the case anymore. In 2016, 83 per cent of all the deaths on our island were non-communicable diseases, not a murder, not a robbery. All developmental habits that led to 83 per cent mortality for the population, and nobody talks about it.”

He described NCDs as “silent” killers that do not spark the same urgency as violent crime.

Through his advocacy work, Massiah has visited schools across the island and said he has seen clear evidence that strict enforcement of the national school nutrition policy makes a difference.

“Probably 30 per cent, 40 per cent” of schools have shown progress, he noted, “especially when it comes to the school nutrition policy and honouring that.”

He pointed out that schools awarded
by the Heart & Stroke Foundation for excellence in promoting healthy habits “have stuck strictly to that rule” of not selling sugar-sweetened beverages or processed foods. 

By contrast, he said, “the other schools who have not been as successful may not sell the stuff in the school, but when we step two feet outside, they are there. That played a part subliminally, but it built up over time, similar to how the NCD problem is.”

Massiah added that the attitudes of those supervising children also matter. “I’ve been to schools where the  supervisors of the children have this very skewed opinion about the messages we bring, and then that also ties into how effectively they educate the kids.” (SZB)