Dialing Up Knowledge about Diabetes

 

 

"The camp has helped me understand how my own body responds to activity."  

                                                                                                - Camp participant

 

The annual Diabetes Youth Sports Camp at York University is a camp for children and youth ages 8-16 with type 1 diabetes who participate, or have interest in participating, in competitive sports. The camp has been offered since 2007 and is affiliated with York University Sports and Recreation summer camps. York University’s Department of Sports and Recreation is supported in this initiative by:  

• Diabetes Hope Foundation
• Tracey Rubinoff Diabetes Hope Fund  
• Medtronic Canada

 

This camp has a number of different aims:  

• to allow youth with diabetes to engage in competitive sports
• to share strategies on managing diabetes during exercise
• to allow youth with diabetes to interact and share their experiences with others who have the same condition
• to continue ongoing research in the field of diabetes management during exercise

 

 

 

 

 

Key messages for stakeholders

For Students: don’t let your diabetes keep you down.  Learn how to manage your blood sugar levels so that you can participate equally in sports and recreation activities

For Parents: With appropriate education your child can have a full, athletic life.  Help your child learn to manager his/her blood glucose levels.

For Schools and School Boards: Actively seek how to safely include diabetic children in your schools’ physical activity and sporting programs.  Provide information and assistance to enhance access for diabetic children seeking to reach their athletic potential.

For Ministries of Education and Health: Thirty students with diabetes are now better able to manage their blood glucose and become healthier young adults.  Diabetes camps need to be supported throughout Ontario.

For Clinicians: Keep up to date on the effects of exercise on blood glucose management in type 1 diabetes

For Researchers: Don’t just do research on people with diabetes.  Actively engage your research subjects as research partners.  Find out what information they need to receive and how they want to receive it.

 

About the Researcher

Dr. Riddell was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 14. Following the diagnosis and throughout his adolescence he remained very active in sports. His ambitions led him to get his PhD, specializing in energy metabolism during exercise in children and adolescents. In recent years his research focused on how exercise and stress affects metabolism levels in persons with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. Three years ago, Dr. Riddell discovered that there is a sports camp for adult athletes with diabetes in the U.S., but there was no camp like this for youth. This prompted Dr. Riddell to start the Type 1 Diabetes Youth Sports Camps at York University, the first of its kind.

Read more about Dr. Riddell here and see an interview with Dr. Riddell at the camp here.  More information about this camp and his research can be found at www.yorku.ca/mriddell/.

To read the full report of the Diabetes Youth Sports Camp at York University, click here and to read the ResearchSnapshot about this research, click here.