My father has worked with the department of
justice for 20+ years, so he has worked regularly with police officers. As soon
as my Kinesiology professor had announced an opportunity to work with public
safety officers, it immediately sparked my interest. My father has conveyed to
me other the years what law enforcement tasks entail-long work hours, both
physical and sedentary work-related demands, and responding to highly stressful
situations with carrying heavy equipment. As a kinesiology major and former
psychology and public health major, I am extremely interested in not only how
human movement affects our health, but also how our environment, occupations, and
behavior can impact our mental and physical health. My long-term goal is to
become a physical therapist working with populations who have limited movement
whether it be due to medical circumstances, such as a chronic or acute illness,
or an unfortunate injury. A physical therapist’s job is to improve people’s
quality of life through movement. I believe that exercise is the best
‘medicine’ that can help someone restore functionality in order to live a
high-quality life. As I’ve studied Prince William County public safety officers
through this project, I’ve gained a better understanding of how their
lifestyles can relate to their movement, fitness and health dysfunctions and
where in the health and occupational field we have some gaps and needs for
intervention or more research.
On a weekly basis, I attend team meetings
with my fellow student peers and mentors, where we discuss collaboratively
about our research topic and with our research protocol. I learned how to properly
review literature on police fitness and quality of life, as well as how to
develop a clear and concise research question based on past literature. I also test
3-5 public safety officers in the GMU SMART Lab on the Manassas campus. On each
of our subjects I help run a body composition test, a functional movement
screen indicating any movement dysfunctions, and other various tests that
assess their muscular strength, endurance, power and cardiovascular fitness.
After each testing protocol is complete, I write a fitness test report with the
subject’s results compared to the normative data. I work either independently
or collaboratively with other Kinesiology and athletic training students to
write an exercise program for that individual public safety officer During this project, I have realized not only
how much of environments and occupation directly affect our health, but that
being able to come up with a clear and concise research question is the
foundation of any research study. Learning from past literature and making research
decisions based on what is both known and unknown is the most intriguing thing
to me about research.
