Confining activities to the rocking chair, the beach
and the TV couch may be some retirees' idea of good living,
but according to new research by experts at Johns Hopkins,
published this month on the Journal of Urban
Health's Web site, spending some time with young
children in the classroom might give them a lot more time
to enjoy life.
"Volunteering in a grade school may not seem
immediately appealing to older Americans," said Erwin Tan,
assistant professor of geriatrics in the School of Medicine
and lead author of the study. "But honestly, our volunteers
say it's an enriching experience, and, it turns out, it may
be good for you."
In a study of 113 men and women 60 and older, Hopkins
researchers investigated the subjects' physical health as
it related to their activity levels. Fifty-nine were
involved in the Experience Corps Baltimore, a volunteer
program designed at Johns Hopkins'
Center for Aging, which places elderly volunteers in
kindergarten and grammar school classrooms to be mentors
and tutors for 15 hours a week. The other 54 individuals
were not enrolled in any activity-based volunteer work and
served as a comparison group.
The Hopkins researchers concluded that older adults
who failed suggested U.S. standards for physical activity
when they started volunteering in public grammar schools
doubled the amount of calories they burned after
volunteering for just one school year. The Centers for
Disease Control recommends that all Americans be physically
active or exercise for half an hour a day, five days a
week.
"On the surface, these findings seem obvious: The
busier you are, the more physically active you are, and
those seniors who keep themselves busy volunteering are
going to get more exercise," Tan said. "But the real news
here is that this kind of volunteer work can be designed to
successfully accomplish two things: The children and
teachers benefit by having more wisdom and experience in
the classroom, and, as this study shows, it gets the
seniors more physically active, which we all know is good
for everyone. It's a potential win-win for any
community."
Tan said it is also believed that the increased
physical and mental activity enjoyed by the volunteers
enrolled in the Experience Corps also led to the seniors'
becoming more active in other environments, namely when
doing household chores, gardening and home maintenance
activities.
"It says a lot when we document a near doubling in the
physical activity levels of inactive adults who enrolled in
this volunteer program," Tan said. "We've shown that
volunteering isn't just good; it really is good for you,
too."
Because previous studies have shown that healthful
intervention programs need to be implemented in high-risk
communities with "lower access to health promotion and a
higher burden of morbidity," as well as for low-risk
adults, it is important to note that 96 percent of the
participants in Experience Corps Baltimore are
African-American and 84 percent had an annual income of
less than $15,000 a year, [statistics that place them in a
high-risk group].
Linda Fried, head of Geriatric Medicine and the Center
on Aging and Health at Johns Hopkins and a co-founder of
the Experience Corps program, said, "There are now
meaningful important roles in which older adults can make a
difference; you do not have to watch television every day
of your retirement years.
"Staying active," she said, "contributes to physical
and mental vitality. The means to do so are available, and
as these recent findings show, the payback to those
earnings is real and quantifiable to any senior willing and
able to commit the time and energy."
Experience Corps Baltimore continues to conduct
research on the mental and physical well-being of a cohort
of participant volunteers that continues to grow. Over the
next year, the ranks of the Baltimore program are expected
to expand from 200 to more than 1,200. Additional studies
are planned for examining this larger group.
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