Another Successful Obesity Bootcamp



Today is the last day of another successful Summer Obesity Bootcamp – the 7th thus far.

Participants included students and trainees from across Canada, including the Universities of Calgary, Sherbrooke, Memorial, Toronto, Laval, Ottawa, Montreal, British Columbia, Queen’s, Western Ontario, Waterloo, and Concordia with even a few participants from Michigan State (USA), and Maringa (Brazil).

The excellent hand-picked trainees (certainly among the brightest in Canada) work in a wide range of fields, from gut hormones, adipokines, genetics, immunology and amino acid metabolism to diabetes, bone health, epicardial fat, and psychology. Other topics include promoting physical activity in children, improving nutrition labelling, understanding growth and weight trajectories, and weight gain during pregnancy in First Nations women.

For me the excitement is less in the formal presentations or the excellent science but rather in the social interactions with the trainees where we discuss everything from career plans to future angst to topics of general interest (in fact, one of the presentations I give deals with career planning).

This newly minted group of bootcamp graduates is just another instalment in what is now a tightly knit Canada-wide network (with some international outliers) of over 160 young men and women who will significantly influence how Canada deals with its obesity problems – both in prevention and treatment.

Congratulations to all of the trainees on completing the over 70 hrs of course work – thank you to all of my co-faculty for taking the time to share their knowledge and wisdom with the students – special thanks also you to Paul Boisvert (Laval) and all of the CON staff for putting all of this together.

Although funding this initiative is sure to remain a challenge, I certainly do look forward to future camps.

AMS
Station touristique Duchesnay, QC