The Health and Wellness Center at Tinker Air Force Base has a mission of keeping Team Tinker fit and healthy with four core areas of focus including tobacco-free living, sleep optimization, nutrition and physical activity. Health Promotion Manager Laura Crowder, Exercise Physiologist Traci Fuhrman and Nutrition Program Manager Wendi Knowles work together in these areas and hold various classes open to members of the Tinker community to promote a healthy living.
What are the most important ways your agency serves Tinker?
Crowder: “I’m the Health Promotion Manager and I’m responsible for anything related to installation tobacco use, treatment, and cessation. There’s messaging and programming available that’s really geared toward our active duty military members and our reserves. I also have a resource guide for dependents, retirees and our federal civilians. I am responsible for classes, messaging, and programming in sleep optimization and fatigue management as well.”
Fuhrman: “My main program is the F.A.S.T (Fitness Assessment Success Training) program which is for helping active duty members with preparing for and being successful in their fitness assessment or physical training test. I also work with them through injury prevention. We put a plan in place where all the leadership and Unit Fitness Program Managers know about the program so when one of their members fails, a lot of squadrons have made it their policy that they come into our program. We help them get ready to pass their PT test. It’s a lot of strength, run conditioning, cardio, core and flexibility training. Wendi and Laura teach a portion of that with nutrition, sleep help and stress management.
We’ve seen a rise in BMI, a rise in fitness fails and a rise in injury profiles and without having these structured programs in place members are not able to receive the appropriate training to overcome these medical conditions. I’m contracted here through Tinker, no other Air Force base has an exercise physiologist so Tinker is the only structured program offered as far as helping with fitness and injuries. I had started a program and they saw that it was a real benefit to the members and decided to fund the Air Base Wing locally.”
Knowles: “I teach all kinds of classes, the one I do the most is the Performance Nutrition class which is a part of the F.A.S.T.(Fitness Assessment Success Training) class, but they can come to this individually if they want to. It’s a series of eight classes that they come to once a week. I also teach prenatal class, baby business class, pregnancy class, First Term Airmen class... We also have something called Military Nutrition Environment Assessment Tool which is an annual survey of the nutrition environment and I lead that program. It’s due again in September and is an annual survey of the environment and whether or not we offer healthy options. We’re trying to find out if there are ways we can improve and there is always something we could do a little bit differently. For that survey, we work with all of the different organizations on base that serve food.
I’m also the coordinator of a program called Operation Supplement Safety and that is a safety program for supplement use for everybody on the base. It’s a great free resource if you’re looking at taking something that might be a supplement to help educate yourself before you take it.”
When an individual reaches out to the HAWC office what can they expect?
Crowder: “I’m in the squadrons often, so if an active duty members stops me and needs help with reducing or quitting tobacco we typically talk at that time instead of setting up an appointment. I was in the 966th AACS the other day and there were six members interested in quitting smokeless tobacco, we talked at that time about ways to cut back on dipping, and I provided them with a non-tobacco/non-nicotine alternative. If a members, prefers an individual consults, we can set up an appointment at the HAWC or during my office hours at the 960th AACS Flight Line Clinic.
For sleep optimization, I review squadrons’ health and readiness metrics, and if there is a large percentage of members in a squadron not getting at least seven hours of sleep each night or they are suffering from poor sleep quality, then I will offer sleep and fatigue management classes in that squadron. A favorite class I teach is ‘sleep strategies and tactical napping’ where we discuss five ways to improve sleep quality and the class practices what they have just learned with a 20 minute tactical nap.”
Fuhrman: “If they do fail they can contact their Unit Fitness Program Manager or most likely their UFPM will tell them that they’re putting them in the class and if they haven’t failed, because the class is open to any active duty member, and they just want to join the class to get healthier and improve their fitness they can contact their UFPM who can enroll them. The idea is about prevention and a lot of the squadrons have started doing mock PT tests in house so if they fail the mock they’ll put them in our program to prevent the fail.
If anyone wants to meet with me one-on-one, maybe they have an injury that they’re working through and they need a rehab program, they can call and make an appointment — or if they need a running gait they can schedule an appointment for that as well.”
What are the common misconceptions about your agency?
Fuhrman: “In the past people felt like being in the program was a bad thing. The classes are not just for failure, would be the big misconception, they’re for prevention.”
What’s your favorite part of working in your position?
Knowles: “We had a colonel through one of the classes and he passed his test yesterday. It’s exciting when you can see somebody coming from an at-the-bottom fail, spend eight weeks in the program and get a 91 (on their fitness test). With him being a higher rank, that just leads to more promotion of the program.”
The HAWC can be reached at 734-6575. Class dates and enrollment can be found at http://org2.eis.af.mil/sites/2238/2/72ndFSS/FAC