Episode 27: Unfit for Duty: The National Security Risks of Inactivity with Dan Bornstein (Copy)
My friend Dan might be the 'most interesting man in the world': Ph.D., adrenaline junkie, rock band member, and he's on a mission to change the world, or at least make it safer.
Daniel B. Bornstein, Ph.D., is the Founding Principal at DBornsteinSolutions, LLC, a company providing consulting services at the unique intersection of fitness, health, and national security. Dr. Bornstein has over 20 years of experience as a researcher, professor, and industry leader. He served as a tenured faculty member and administrator at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, from 2012-2021. Dr. Bornstein arrived at The Citadel in 2012 after completing his Ph.D. in Exercise Science from the University of South Carolina. Before earning his Ph.D., he founded and was CEO of two fitness companies based in Tucson, AZ, focusing on individual-level, holistic fitness and health for various clients, including elite sport and military athletes. However, for the past fourteen years, his work has focused on effective strategies for increasing population levels of physical activity to improve the nation's fitness, health, and security.
Dr. Bornstein actively publishes in leading scientific journals and regularly presents at national and international scientific conferences. His research has been featured in over 130 media outlets worldwide, including USA Today, Newsweek, Stars and Stripes, and National Public Radio. Dr. Bornstein has provided numerous briefings to senior military personnel and lawmakers, including briefings at The Pentagon and Capitol Hill.
Dr. Bornstein is currently the Chair of the Military Sector for the US National Physical Activity Plan. Dr. Bornstein now resides in Norwich, VT, with his wife and their two children, who enjoy finding fun ways to be physically active across the four seasons.
So what, now what?
Get moving. Your life and our national security depend on it!
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Annette: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone to episode 27 of the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast. Today you're gonna hear from my friend Dan Bornstein, who is a former faculty member at The Citadel, and currently working for himself at Bornstein Solutions LLC. We talked a lot about physical fitness and how lack of physical fitness is becoming a national security risk, not just for the military but also for fire and law enforcement. So give it a listen, and if you are so inclined, a rating and share it with someone you know. Thank you, and have a great day.
Thank you for joining me on the Fire Rescue. Wellness Podcast. I'm your host AZ. I find the research and resources and then provide the fire service with the so what now, what? To ensure the health and wellbeing of every [00:01:00] member of our profession together. Let's thrive. Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Fire Rescue wellness Podcast, where today I am sitting down with my friend Dan Bornstein. Dan, please say hello to my podcast people.
Dan Bornstein: Hello, podcast people.
Annette: Oh, I love the enthusiasm. I love it. Dan, I always start my podcast with three rapid-fire questions that I hope to elucidate alittle bit of background about my guests.
Are you ready for my questions?
Dan Bornstein: Fire away.
Annette: All right. Who is Dan Bornstein?
Dan Bornstein: I think it depends upon who you ask.
Annette: Good answer.
Dan Bornstein: I would, if so, you're asking me. So I would say I'm a dad to two teenagers. I'm a husband to my adoring wife. I'm a son and son-in-law. I am trained as an exercise scientist and [00:02:00] public health person.
an aspiring rock musician, , and and a former, because I think this will be relevant to your audience. A former volunteer firefighter.
Annette: I need to hear more about the aspiring rock musician. Please elaborate.
Dan: So I, when I used to live in Charleston, South Carolina, and I was in a band called Kabuki Love Machine, where I was a drummer. We actually had two drummers, so I was one of the two drummers and I did lead and backup vocals, and we just played the music that we grew up with. So like seventies, eighties, nineties, rock and roll. And it was awesome. It was just awesome. We weren't, we were okay. We weren't awesome, as musically awesome, but we had a great time together.
We gigged not too often, maybe once every two months or so but it was just a total getaway from everything else in my life. And it [00:03:00] was me making music together with other people is one of, for me, one of life's great joys. And I now, I've moved to Vermont about a year and a half ago, and I have, I don't have a band yet, so that is a big vortex in my life right now.
Annette: I do not know if Scott Caulfield plays an instrument. But I really think you need to be in a band with him. More to follow. All right, Dan, what sets your soul on fire?
Dan Bornstein: Aside from playing rock and roll music I'm a total adrenaline junkie. I think that's part of why I became a firefighter was I really did...you know this, right? That when the pager goes off or the alarm bell goes off, the adrenaline starts pumping no matter what kind of scene you're going to. So when I gave up firefighting, I got into actually into high performance driving. And so I'm also a high performance driving instructor and I was an amateur race car driver for a little while.
So [00:04:00] anything that gets my heart like pumping so downhill skiing also now that I live in Vermont, is an adrenaline rush. That's the kind of stuff that sets my soul on fire, on the fun side of things. On the professional side of things, what sets my soul on fire is finding connections, like being a professional dot connector. So finding some group or some individual who's doing something really cool over here. And then another personal organization that's doing something really cool over there. And I can see how if the two of them came together that sparks would fly and they would be able to do so much better and do so much more together.
That also like professionally totally sets my soul on fire. So I'm, I've. I guess coined myself a professional dot connector.
Annette: I like that. I am professional glue, so I do the same thing that you do, but I don't [00:05:00] connect the dots. I glue the people together. Who knew we had all these things in common, Dan.
Wow. Who knew? Who knew? And the race car driving this. You are just blowing my mind right now. All right, last question. Rapid fire. How are you changing the world?
Dan Bornstein: Oh. On a daily basis by trying to make people smile. I think that's, my wife once asked me like, one night in bed, like why do you think you were put on this earth
It was just, it was like a Tuesday night and I was like, wow, that's a fine time for a question like this. But what was so weird was that without even giving it any thought, it was almost like, My soul was speaking, like I didn't process it at all cognitively, I just said to make people smile. So on a daily basis it's making people smile.
But really it's about trying ultimately, professionally for me, [00:06:00] it's largely. Trying to increase physical activity levels across the entire population so that we can improve population, physical health, mental health, and then readiness for whatever that means, whether that's readiness for.
Being a parent or a, a dually employed professional or a member of our US armed forces or a first responder readiness can mean a lot of different things, but without being sufficiently physically active based upon my own. Research and also probably personal bias. It's pretty tough to be ready for life.
Annette: And we're gonna dig really deep down in that rabbit hole of readiness as one of the main topics on this podcast. But before we get there, when I first met you, I think it was in 2019, but I'm not sure. When I first met you, you were fulfilling a position at The Citadel. So tell me a little bit about what you did at The [00:07:00] Citadel.
Tell me about the program you developed. Tell me all the things.
Dan Bornstein: Tell you all the things. Yeah. I, we met, I think at Summer Strong,
Annette: oh. Yes, that's right,
Dan Bornstein: which, so for those who have never been to or seen or heard about a Summer strong you owe yourself the joy of going to Summer Strong. I won't say anything more about it cuz I like the mystery behind it.
But that's where I think we first met cuz we had just started rolling out the programs, the academic programs at the Citadel that I had conceptualized. I didn't develop the whole thing cuz I had a lot of help. But what we developed there was the first ever degree, actual academic degree and certificate programs in what we call tactical performance and resiliency.
So the NSCA the National Strength and Conditioning Association had developed their certification as a tactical strength and conditioning facilitator. But there [00:08:00] was recognition that was a necessary but maybe not necessarily sufficient condition for a highly effective tactical strength and conditioning professional.
That there were a lot of other skills that maybe and knowledge sets that needed to go along with that. So while I was at the Citadel, which is a military college down in South Carolina I stood up a center there that was called the Center for Performance Readiness Resiliency, and. and there were three basic components of that center, one of which was academic degree and certificate programs.
So we created an online undergraduate bachelor of science degree in Tactical Strength and conditioning. We developed a graduate certificate online in tactical performance and resiliency. And then we also developed a residential masters of science in tactical Performance and resiliency. That was the academic side of what I was doing while I [00:09:00] was there.
Annette: That was one of, if not the only program like that in the country at the time, right?
Dan Bornstein: Yeah, it was the first. It was the first ever. I don't think it's the only one now, which is a good thing because there's a lot more need for education in this space. But yes, at the time it was the first and only.
Annette: Outstanding. What I wanted to really talk to you about today I've heard you speak about this couple times. I heard you speak about it at Tactical Annual this year with Dr. Dawes, the lack of fitness becoming a national security issue. It's, this is really intriguing to me and I think it's potentially something that my listeners have never even considered might impact the candidates that are coming into the [00:10:00] fire service.
So tell me first, what does this even mean?
Dan Bornstein: What does this even mean? Can I back up even further?
Annette: Heck yes you can.
Dan Bornstein: And talk about how we even got to this idea that, that physical act like low physical activity or low physical fitness might actually be a national security issue.
Annette: Back up the truck.
Let's talk about it.
Dan Bornstein: All right. Yep. I was getting my PhD at the University of South Carolina and it was a PhD in exercise science, but with an emphasis on physical activity and health. So yes, I was studying some mechanistic and cellular level exercise physiology. But the overall emphasis was, like I was talking about earlier, trying to increase population levels of physical activity.
And at the time I was also working a s a graduate student on a project called the US National Physical Activity Plan, which was like a strategic plan [00:11:00] to do what it sounds like increased population levels of physical activity, and we had decades of really good science on the importance of physical activity for.
And also the how physical inactivity is associated with many non-communicable and now even communicable diseases like Covid, right? We saw that there was this pretty strong correlation between low physical fitness and poorer outcomes from Covid, so we had, again, decades of evidence. but very but this persistent decline in the physical activity levels of the population.
So there's this disconnect, right? How is it that we have all this science but the problem's getting worse? And then I took a class in health promotion and the class was about messaging and framing in public health. So how do you frame or talk about a particular problem? and the class was being taught by a professor [00:12:00] who I love, he's fantastic.
His name is Jim Thrasher. So shout out to Jim Thrasher at the University of South Carolina. But his area of expertise was actually in tobacco control policy, and what I learned in his class was that what led to the significant drop in smoking in the US and the subsequent drop precipitous drop in l ung cancer in this country was not the evidence on the harmful effects of smoking to the smoker, but the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.
So in, in essence, what was happening was you had all this science that said smoking was really bad for you, but that wasn't enough for any kind of policy change to try to limit that. But when the harm evidence on the harmful effects of secondhand smoke became evident, that's when you saw the federal government and even [00:13:00] local municipal government stepping in and saying, we're gonna limit your access to smoke to cigarettes.
We're gonna put surgeon general's warnings on packages of cigarettes, and we're gonna tax cigarettes and we're gonna limit where you can even use them, right? You can no longer smoke in the workplace or on airplanes and so on and in bars and so on and so forth. And so basically what you did was you changed the environments, making it really difficult to access the thing that was negatively impacting not only individuals in their own health, but the health of others. And so it was in that moment as I was studying this stuff that I went, okay, we know that physical inactivity is really bad for the individual and physical activity is really good for the individual.
What is the, like secondhand smoke equivalent? How is physical inactivity? How is my being physically inactive, adversely affecting other people? And [00:14:00] that's when I started doing research on the physical fitness levels of recruits entering the military and the associations between low fitness and musculoskeletal injuries that were taking place during basic training and then following service members over the course of their careers, and then even into veteran status and how much that was costing the Department of Defense and the VA.
And so that's when I had this idea. I think we need to reframe physical inactivity as not necessarily a public health issue, but as a national security issue. And so that's that relationship. And again, the problem is getting worse, right? As we're seeing physical activity levels and fitness levels still continuing to decline we see that this year, for example, the US Army fell short of recruiting goal by approximately 20,000 soldiers.
Annette: Wow.
Dan Bornstein: [00:15:00] And so what does that mean? It means that we are gonna have a smaller army. It means that selection processes for things like special operation forces those things may decline as. They're having trouble filling their ranks and you're just gonna have this trickle down effect.
And I know the same is true across the fire service and also in law enforcement. It's getting harder and harder to find individuals who not only have the desire or propensity to serve, whether that's serving their country in the US armed forces, or serving their community as a first responder but they also lack the fitness to serve. So finding individuals who have both is becoming increasingly more challenging. And that poses very real and very present threats to our national security, but also our state and [00:16:00] local safety and security.
Annette: Absolutely. And as you were talking about the tremendous expense for the military.
On these soldiers or other military members that they're hiring. The dollar signs just started flinging, flinging, fling in my head. Is that number in the millions?
In the billions?
Dan Bornstein: It's in the billions. It's in the billions,
Annette: Lord.
Dan Bornstein: Yeah, it's in the billions. So because there's not only just the medical cost for treating the injury as it happens, let's call it an ankle sprain or or maybe it's shin splints or something like that. There's the direct medical cost, but then there's also the indirect costs. So there's the taking the person out of you know. And the fire service would be putting on limited duty, basically.
Or maybe they get they get processed out of themilitary. And the amount of time and money that you've spent on training that [00:17:00] person, now all that is lost. So when you start adding these dollars up they're in the tens of billions of dollars per year for the DOD. And then it just moves on to the VA as they have to treat the residual effects of these musculoskeletal injuries that were sustained over the course of a service member's career.
So it's, it is a major economic issue but it's also a practical issue from the standpoint of just having enough people who are fit enough to go out and do the job.
Annette: And not only, I think this was your analogy, we're all dipping from the same well police, fire, and military agencies are all trying to hire from the same historically, many of the police officers and firefighters were former military members, so that.[00:18:00]
Especially if there's so many of them getting injured and processed out, that pipeline is getting shut down as well. That's very concerning.
Dan Bornstein: It is it is, it's really concerning. It's we can either act or not act on the problem, and if we don't act on the problem by really putting resources behind.
then frankly, we really do so at our own peril. Truly at our own peril, and I, that might sound hyperbolic. But it's really not hyperbole. It's a reality that when that alarm bell sounds, there might not be enough people to answer the bell or anybody to answer the bell. And I see that in my own hometown right now, my new hometown of Norwich.
Which is a small town in the middle of Vermont. There's not a whole lot of crime. But there's one police officer right now. And we were without any police officers for a [00:19:00] short time. We have a volunteer fire department. The chief has called me a few times asking if I'll join again.
And it's been so long, I'd have to go through the academy and I'm 50 and I'm not sure I wanna do that. Oh. But you don't but they're, I think they're down to 12 firefighters.
Annette: Not to bring up Scott Caufield again. He was a firefighter in the Navy let's go Scott.
Dan Bornstein: Yeah, he's too far away though, so it's weird.
I live in Norwich, Vermont. Which is not where Norwich University is. Oh. Which is crazy cuz Norwich University is in Vermont, . But it's actually, Norwich University is actually 40 miles north of me in a town called Northfield, Vermont. Let's make things complicated. . Yeah. Scott's response time for the Norwich village Fire department would be a little too long, a little too long, but for Northfield Fire Department, he could certainly sign up.
Annette: Northfield, if you're listening, Scott Caufield [00:20:00] he's your guy at the school. He's your guy. Look for Alfie too. He's your guy. So yes, if I'm not mistaken, you have actually addressed Congress about this issue. And you said, we need to act on the problem or not act, but that's going to cause a lot of peril. So when you address Congress, what did you have to say to them?
Dan Bornstein: Basically what I said what I've, a lot of what I've just said now. You can't just come to somebody with problems, you've gotta come with solutions as well. So the context in. I had the opportunity to brief Congress. I've done it twice. But this, the most recent one was to release formally a new what, what I, this new military settings sector of the National Physical Activity Plan.
So I had mentioned that earlier when I was at University of South Carolina. I was working on the development [00:21:00] of this national physical activity plan, which at the time was organized around eight different societal sectors. There was an education sector and there was a transportation sector, and there was a public health sector.
And again, all these areas that can influence physical activity levels. But about two-ish years ago, I was tapped on the shoulder and asked to have to develop a new sector chair, the group to develop a new sector on military settings. . So we did that and we officially launched the military setting sector in the context of a congressional briefing.
So basically, yes. What we were saying to Congress at that time was, the Army is facing some serious recruiting challenges, and we had some of the generals from Army's training, command training and doctrine command, talking about some of those challenges. But al also talking about some of the ways in which they're addressing those challenges.
Once somebody gets into the Army, [00:22:00] through the Army's, what's called holistic health and fitness program or H2F, which I know you're familiar with and some of your listeners may be as well. I was talking about it again in the context more globally of how we compare to other nations.
And so one of the last slides, for example, that I had was a slide of US Army soldiers marching in formation. And a group of Chinese soldiers marching in formation with research based statistics showing that for every one army soldier that gets injured in basic training, there are two male and three female US Army soldiers who get injured in basic training.
And Army, I'm sorry. China is by far our greatest. Adversary. It just is. And so if we don't do something about this it's gonna be a [00:23:00] problem. At some point we may unfortunately have to face China on the battlefield, and if we don't start addressing the issue by really resourcing physical activity and fitness and the other domains of health mental health and spiritual health and cognitive health, and but we were specifically talking about physical activity and physical fitness at that time, then we're gonna lose.
That's the reality. I thought. The reality is we will no longer be the world's number one superpower. I don't know. I don't know enough to know exactly what that means from a total geopolitical perspective. But it'll become the reality.
Annette: So Dan is part of the answer because I remember as a child when I was grade school, even middle school, not so much in high school, but definitely grade school and middle school, I had gym class three times a week. Is that the [00:24:00] answer? Going back and saying, we, we messed this up, we need to put gym class back into the school system, or at least that part of the answer.
Dan Bornstein: Yeah. Hard. Yes. That's, that is definitely part of the answer. So what we've done in essence is we have engineered physical activity out of our lives in many different ways, right? So our ability to live our life. When you think about how we live today compared to how we lived 50 or a hundred or 150 years ago we had to be physically active to survive 150 years ago.
Now we don't. When you look at how our public school systems have been set up over the last 15 to 20 years, there has been policy, federal policy that has put priority [00:25:00] around reading and math and some of the core academic subjects. Why? Because we were falling behind other nations. So this emphasis on these core quote unquote academic subjects and the standardized testing to assess ability around those core academic subjects meant that other things got deprioritized.
Other things being physical education, music drama and other things that we know also really develop the human. . But yes, physical education has been stripped out of a significant portion of the educational experience K through 12. And as a result you have a population of people who have much lower, what we would call physical literacy.
Ability to actually use their bodies and they have much lower physical fitness in [00:26:00] the military. So Colonel Kevin Bigelman with US Army, who's basically running the H2F program, one of his lines is if you can't throw a baseball, how are you gonna be able to throw a grenade?
Touche.
Annette: Touche.
Dan Bornstein: And I see some kids nowadays and I look at how they run or I look at how they throw and it's a little embarrassing . But there's also more to it than that, right? So there used to be more opportunities to walk and bike to school. But because of land and land costs, schools are now the town where I live in now, the school is like right in the center of town and there are tons of kids that walk and bike to school. And the same was true when I lived in South Carolina. But there are a lot of schools that are located 5, 7, 10 miles from town or from where people live. So they've gotta get on a bus to go to school. You can't walk or bike to school anymore, or it's not safe because there aren't safe [00:27:00] sidewalks or what have you.
So again, our whole transportation system has been. to primarily serve single occupant vehicles. There's been almost no attention paid to to those who are trying to get from point A to point B by walking or biking or rolling if they if they're not an able-bodied person. So again, we have an entire system, a transportation system that is, that has been engineered to not account for physical activity. You have an entire educational system that is stripped away. Physical education and opportunities for physical activity. You have a healthcare system that is set up to treat disease rather than prevent disease. But there are signs for hope. There are efforts.
There's something called Complete Streets. There's a Complete Streets Coalition [00:28:00] which talks about how you can actually engineer or reverse engineers streets in cities and towns to accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, cars, buses, what have you, in a very safe way. You've got medical schools that are incorporating courses in physical activity and nutrition as part of becoming a medical doctor.
Annette: Praise be. And finally
Dan Bornstein: Yeah. Is it pervasive? No. These are like exceptions to the rule, more so than they are the rule. But in education, it, we still don't have the type of policies that are going to ultimately change the system such that physical education becomes a part of every child's day and or week.
So yes, to answer your question, yes, it is a huge part of the problem.
Annette: And as you were talking about all of those nice things that we've engineered to make our lives so easy, [00:29:00] it reminded me. Again I brought up this book, the Comfort Crisis in episode 16 with Jorge Carvajal. Have you read that book?
Dan Bornstein: No, I haven't, but I can. I'm gonna go out and read it.
Annette: It's actually, it's really good. But one of the main points from the book is that our lifespan is longer than it's ever been, but our health span is shorter and everything we do, most of us, everything we do is in an effort to make things easier and more comfortable for ourselves.
So there's just no struggle for us. And there's no challenge for us physically, so yeah, definitely. Michael Easter is the author.
Dan Bornstein: Yeah, no I'll, I will definitely check it out. And that reminds me of a term that I used to teach when I was at the Citadel and I taught a course called Physical Activity and National Where exercise science meets political science, and we talked in that class about the concept of compressed [00:30:00] morbidity and that concept of compressed morbidity which is sounds a lot like what you're describing is that from a healthcare perspective and a cost for treating disease perspective, the person who has the lowest drain on the healthcare system is the person who essentially never really never sees the doctor for any disease or what have you. But they just suddenly die so the example I used to give to my students was, you've got this like 98 year old person, no diabetes, no heart disease, no anything, none of these chronic diseases, right? They maybe go for a Wellness check once a year.
And they've maintained the super active lifestyle. So they're jogging across the street and get hit by a truck and. So in terms of the drain that they've put on the healthcare system, it's close to zero compared to somebody who age 13 now gets diagnosed with type two diabetes, which [00:31:00] is an incredibly expensive disease to treat, and they're a type two diabetic for 50 or 60 years.
That never used to happen. Type two diabetes, which is a lifestyle disease, was a disease even 20 years ago that was essentially a disease of people who were 50 and over, and now it's a disease that's quite common among even teens and pre-teens. Gosh. So again, when we think about, again, also, so when we talk about national security and here's a little nugget too that it's a little bit more indirect, but when we, when people say what is, what do you mean? What's this association between physical activity and health and national security? If you look at the percent of the GDP, our gross domestic product that we spend on health expenditures, it's almost 18% of our GDP.
Annette: unbelievable.
Dan Bornstein: When you compare that to, when you compare that [00:32:00] to our military expenditures the annual budget for the National Defense Authorization Act, that's more usually between three and 4% of GDP. So when we start talking about our ability, again to compete with some of our greatest near-peer adversaries like China and we start falling behind, not just in the planes and tanks and bombs that we have, but in the war fighters that we have. If we could somehow save a whole bunch of money on what we're spending on treating these non-communicable, preventable lifestyle diseases and put them into either education or our military we'd be in a much better.
But right now, that's not the priority.
Annette: I absolutely agree. And ironically or coincidentally, I had a phone conversation with one of my coworkers today. I don't often speak to him. He's on a different [00:33:00] shift, but we always have great conversations. And so he called me today like a savage who calls anyway, but shout out to Marty because his question was this: I have this nine and 11 year.
These two children and they played baseball. And the older kid he can crush 25 pushups and a whole bunch of pullups. And he was just telling me all the things they did together. And he said is it safe for him to start lifting some weights or is he too young? And I said, with supervision and really keeping control of how much weight and his form. It's perfectly safe. But I just thought, Marty, you are such a damn good dad. You're doing these, you're modeling these behaviors. They see you go to the gym and they're interested in what you're doing and they're modeling you, your behavior. The whole family does circuits together, but that's not the norm.[00:34:00]
And so how do we reach these children other than gym class, but how do we reach these children that are growing up in homes where family dinner is McDonald's four nights a week? Where family leisure time is, screens and TVs. How do we reach these children, Dan? Cuz the parents, I don't think we can reach them.
Dan Bornstein: Yeah. So it's a good it's a great question. And I hate to give up on an entire generation or sets of generations. So there there's a really important model in public health that any of your listeners, or maybe you can put it in the chat notes or whatever, that's, it's called the social ecological.
Or socio-ecological model. But basically what that model demonstrates is that [00:35:00] at the very center is an individual, the individual's knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavior. So imagine a circle, right? And that circle is this individual and their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and let's say it's around physical activity and health.
if you go, there are concentric circles that move out from that center circle. That is the individual. And those concentric circles have a very significant impact on that individual's knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavior. And the first circle that's outside of that initial one is the social environment.
Your parents, your friends. Your colleagues. What have you, right? So if you're hanging out with a bunch of drug addicts and drinkers that old saying you are, the company you keep is very true. And so the example of your friend calling you today is it a great example of [00:36:00] setting up a social environment that is significantly altering the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors of those children?
And then if you, but if you move out from there, from that social environment, you get to what's called the physical or built environment. Maybe this guy's really dedicated and he's got a gym in his garage, or he takes them to a gym or he is got some equipment or what have you.
So he creates this physical environment that's supportive. And remember we were talking earlier about like transportation infrastructure, what, there's some places where it's frankly not even. To go outside, or at least the perception is that it's not safe to go outside. So that's the built environment.
And then on top of that is what's called the policy environment. And policy could be it could be an elementary school principal. So policy is really Again, it depends. There's like little p policy makers, which are, let's say it's a business owner or a school's principal. And then there are [00:37:00] big P policy makers who are legislators, right at state or federal levels.
But they determine the environment. So a policy can change the physical environment, the social environment, and then the individual knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors. As it relates to kids I don't think we should rule out parents as a huge opportunity to influence behavior of children.
And so there, there's a lot that can be done there. And there's a lot that can be done in schools. we let's talk about faith-based setting. So that's another setting within this national physical activity plan. There are a number of lots of Americans who practice a faith no matter what it is, and maybe go somewhere to do it.
And there could be a, that's a tremendous opportunity, right? There's a lot of trust in our faith leaders and you even see that there are even some organizations that use the connection to the [00:38:00] faith as an opportunity to bring people together to exercise. So there, there are all these opportunities to interact with the environments.
in which our kids interact. So that could, again, that could be school and school's a good one because they spend a lot of time there. That's the, where they spend the majority of their time. So if you were going to forego parents then Yes. Going to schools and changing the environments in and around schools to support what we would call comprehensive school physical activity programs.
Which is, yes, physical education is a cornerstone of that, but also opportunities to have what I would call a free range classroom. So when I was a college professor, it said in my syllabus that sitting was discouraged, that you were encouraged to get up and move around the classroom as long as you weren't interrupting [00:39:00] somebody else.
Learning, right? But I would've students like stretching or doing jumping jacks in the back of the classroom or whatever, just because we know that a short bout of physical activity actually improves your cognition, it improves your ability to be focused and your time on task.
So Annette, I I don't, I wouldn't want to rule out parents because I, because we. That they have such a strong influence over their children's behavior. And I think if we are gonna have our biggest bang for the buck, then I would say yes. We want to intervene on schools and if the goal is to improve physical activity and fitness of a population that has a higher propensity to serve their country or their city or state, Then I would, if I, if somebody asked me where should I spend my money?
I would say, spend it on DOD [00:40:00] schools or DOD connected students, because these are children of parents who are already propensed to serve their country. So again, when we look at our parents as role models you could say the same thing for firefighters and law enforcement officers. There, there are legacy law enforcement officers and firefighters, they do what mom or dad did because they saw what it was, they believed that it was cool and so on. So yes, schools are a great place to do it. And DOD connected schools, again, I would say would be our greatest bang for the buck.
Annette: I'm gonna throw you a curve ball from way out see what you can do with this Dan
Dan Bornstein: Swing and a miss?? No, I'll try.
Annette: All right. For years, and I only can speak specifically to Illinois, but for years we had hundreds and sometimes thousands of applicants for a firefighting job. [00:41:00] And because of the way it works, it's a testing process. It's an ordered list.
It could be a list of 200 people and that department may not even hire anyone in the two years that list is good. So people were just praying for opportunities. So many people wanted the job, and we've seen this shift in the last few years for many different reasons. One, the pension system was changed in Illinois. I think that makes the job a little bit less desirable. I think the fact that younger people are way smarter than we were at that age, and so they're making comparisons, okay, I could go fight fires and not sleep at night and maybe fall through a floor and maybe die, or I could be an investment banker. I think I'll go be an investment banker.
So I think those are two of the issues. And then also this physical fitness issue does come into play. There are some people who truly want to do the job. Are unable due to their [00:42:00] lack of physical fitness. So given all those variables, put 'em in a shaker, shake it up and hand it to you. Dan, what do you see as some ways that we can, or I can make a difference in my cosm in a short amount of time.
Dan Bornstein: Yeah. First I would say that if you're an individual who's already living a healthy lifestyle, you're eating relatively well, you're sleeping relatively well, you're regularly physically active I believe you have an obligation in service to your community and your country to be a champion for healthy lifestyles in your.
going into the schools, going into the firehouses, going into the places of worship and being a leader, being a spark plug, being a champion where you live, work, play, pray, and so on. So I would [00:43:00] say de consider yourself deputized a deputy of healthy living and active living. Go ahead, put the badge on and go to work.
So I would say that's number one, right? And that's you, right? That's something that you do, right? You are, you've taken care of it for yourself, and now you're taking care of. So many other firefighters. But anybody can do that, right? You don't have to be a certified strength and conditioning specialist or have a bachelor's or master's degree in exercise science.
Just go out cuz physical activity. Annette. So I think another really important thing for people to understand that's really misunderstood in this country is the difference between physical activity and exercise. Yes. So there are so many reasons to be averse to exercise. Exercise is structured, planned, usually hot, relatively high intensity, physical activity that requires maybe going someplace special, changing your [00:44:00] clothes, sweating having self-efficacy or a good understanding of what you're gonna do and then probably being pretty uncomfortable and carving out the time to.
Those are significant barriers, and you can remove a lot of those barriers when you realize that exercise is a form of physical activity. But physical activity itself is anything that isn't sitting. So even standing, you're actually using postural muscles that you don't use. when you're sitting. So when you're standing, you're actually expending more energy and training some of those postural muscles to help you maintain good posture.
But take it just a step further, literally and figuratively. Take some physical activity breaks. If you've been sitting at a desk for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes, get up and do 30 seconds of jumping jacks or marching in place or what have you. So breaking up [00:45:00] sedentary time. and fi I call that physical activity snacking, by the way, love that term.
So finding ways to to snack on physical activity throughout your day is really important. So gardening is physical activity. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator is physical activity. Parking further away at the mall or the grocery store is physical activity. Taking your dog for a walk is physical activity.
Playing with your kids is physical activity, ping pong, playing, pool, all this stuff. Physical activity and it counts. It all really does count, and it matters with respect to your health, physical and mental health. So getting back to how do we solve this problem of people not signing up to serve.
Yeah, I think it's a physical activity issue and and I think I'm trying to remember, can you ask me the question I got tangential. So can you a, can you throw me the curveball question again?
Annette: [00:46:00] Absolutely. So we as a fire service are having so many fewer applicants.
Dan Bornstein: Yeah. Pension programs, all that.
Yep. Yep. Got it. Okay. So I think another thing that, that I'm now starting to encourage the Department of Defense. To start to do. And I think that the fire service could do the same thing. It's gotta be able to back up this statement. But we oftentimes, when we think about service members or veterans, we think of them as broken.
And we do. And we do in some ways have a system that does break them. But what if the system was the opposite? What if the system was set? , not to break them, but to keep them healthy and strong. So I know that sleep cycles get disturbed when you're doing shift work and so on, and that there are elements of the job in the fire service that are inherently risky and unhealthy.
Those things, [00:47:00] not withstanding. There are ways in which you can create systems and environments within firehouse. That ultimately will help somebody maintain their health, not only during the course of their time as a firefighter, but for years and years afterwards. But it's up to the leadership of the fire service to create the policies and systems and environments in those firehouses to take care of the firefighters.
So again, at the individual level, if you've already got it locked, , go be a champion. Go be a deputy of physical activity and healthy lifestyle. And if you're in a leadership position in the fire service, you should be that agent of change for policies and systems and environments that are gonna help your firefighters.
And then from a recruiting perspective, you can say, why not join an organization where [00:48:00] you not only get to serve your community, but it's an organization that's truly gonna take care of you physically, mentally, nutritionally, spiritually, for the entire time that you serve and is gonna set you up for a healthy life for the years after service.
Dan, you're warming
Annette: my heart right now. That is the key, and I would encourage you to drop the mic, but. I wanna ask if there's any parting comments that you would like to leave the listeners with, or would you rather just drop the mic?
Dan Bornstein: I'm gonna drop the mic. I'm gonna drop the mic. I've been told I talk too much, so if you are encouraging me to say, drop the mic, I'm gonna drop the mic.
Dan,
Annette: you're amazing. I've been looking forward to this conversation, and I regret that we had to reschedule because you were so sick, but I am so glad that you are feeling better. And Dan, is it okay if I put your contact information in the show notes?
Dan Bornstein: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Absolutely. [00:49:00] And you have that right?
Annette: I do.
Yeah. So my listeners. I appreciate you so much. Please. You have now been deputized to be agents of Change for Health and Wellness, and with that AZ and Dan are officially out.
