UCF Associate Professor Keith Brazendale believes society is overlooking a simple intervention that could be a major game-changer for kids everywhere, so much so that the National Institutes of Health awarded him a $453,000 funding grant to move forward with his study.

The solution? Free summer camp for kids.

“This won’t require 20 years in a lab,” Brazendale says of his study over the next two summers. “Everything is already in place to impact childhood obesity. I think that’s what raised so much curiosity from my proposal. Can it really be this simple?”

Why Summer Camp?

“My ultimate goal is to shift our mindset about how we improve the health of kids,” Brazendale says from his office in UCF’s College of Health Professions and Sciences, “because up until now, I believe we’ve gotten it all wrong.”

Getting it right has inspired Brazendale’s research across two decades, including his next project on combatting childhood obesity.

Brazendale’s project will bring together community pediatricians, organizers of summer day camps, and low-income families. Before the summers of 2026 and 2027 begin, the pediatricians will provide camp vouchers to 40 kids who meet certain weight and body mass index (BMI) criteria. Data collected before camp and after camp will build upon Brazendale’s Structured Day Hypothesis.

“It’s clear that structure is enough to mitigate much of the weight gain we’re observing in American children. I’m hopeful a study like this will affect change in public health policy.”
— Keith Brazendale, UCF associate professor

“We know what happens when kids have no structure,” says Brazendale, a father of two. “When schools closed during COVID, it became our largest experiment of unstructured days. Children’s obesity levels went through the roof. It’s clear that structure is enough to mitigate much of the weight gain we’re observing in American children. I’m hopeful a study like this will affect change in public health policy.”

If this is true, then it raises the question, “Why have we overlooked a structured summer as a solution to childhood obesity?”

Consider that more than 90% of past studies have taken place during the school year — the most convenient time to find kids for research. The timing has led to a repetitive focus on school lunch programs and physical education. Brazendale, however, draws upon his own experiences with kids from low-income communities and believes that studies on schools may be occurring where a natural intervention is already happening.

“Schools actually do a great job because of structure built into each day” he says. “Meanwhile, we’ve ignored 20 years of evidence showing weight gain and loss of fitness occurring during summer.”

He’s referring to evidence which had become “bricks buried in a brickyard.” It happens with a lot of studies. They’re filed away, waiting for another researcher to come along and dig them up years later. That’s how Brazendale began to learn about the link between summer breaks and childhood obesity.

“Pediatricians have reported for years that children are heavier toward the end of summer,” he says. “People my age think of summer as an active time when it really isn’t, especially for kids whose families can’t afford pricey camps and club sports. So, let’s see what happens when we help them fill those empty weeks with free and fun structured activity.”

Community Buy-In

If Brazendale’s hypothesis is correct, it could cultivate the kind of healthy long-term lifestyle Brazendale experienced while growing up in Scotland. His intrigue about children’s health brought him to study in the U.S., where his research momentum eventually landed at UCF. Among his first action items upon arriving was to contact pediatricians at Nemours and leaders of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida.

“When I mentioned bringing all of us together as a potential health intervention for kids, they said, ‘We’re in,’ ” Brazendale says. “Having them involved means we have trusted people in the community to create bridges rather than hoping families respond to a researcher out of nowhere asking them to sign up for a study.”

The research side will include experts from UCF’s College of Nursing, a statistician, a pediatrician and consultants from the University of South Carolina. They’ll compare health markers for the 40 kids who attend summer camp with 40 kids who spend summer at home. Then they’ll do it again with two more groups the following summer.

With additional funding, a second research phase would include hundreds of children nationwide. The results’ ripple effects would be monumental.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “in 2019, the estimated annual medical cost of obesity among U.S. children was $1.3 billion. Medical costs for children with obesity were $116 higher per person per year than for children with healthy weight. Medical costs for children with severe obesity were $310 higher per person per year than for children with healthy weight.”

“Imagine where this could lead,” Brazendale says. “Pediatricians would prescribe summer camp as medicine. The health of children would not be limited by family incomes. The research findings would encourage public policy to subsidize camp enrollment the way we do with Head Start. There would be relief on our medical practitioners and on our healthcare system. Childhood obesity rates would decline and long-term health would improve.”

As part of its corporate social responsibility initiative, Discover Tourism, Visit Orlando partnered with the Preserve Eatonville Community to incorporate behind-the-scenes tours at various hospitality venues for the organization’s STEM Summer Camp program. Students visited the Orange County Convention Center to learn more about the meetings aspect of the tourism industry and walked the expansive building floor. Their journey continued at Rosen College where they took part in a hands-on napkin folding activity and food science demonstration.

“These types of programs open youth’s eyes to the variety of careers available in travel and tourism,” said Kristin Rothbauer, community relations manager for Visit Orlando. “The interactive experiences leave lasting impressions and help the students find a potential niche within an industry that they might not have known otherwise. Rosen College is a perfect fit to show the importance of pursuing a degree in hospitality management and how it can lead to future success.”

Although the connection between STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – and hospitality may not seem obvious, these technical disciplines are essential in building and maintaining the facilities where guests stay, dine, relax and create lasting memories.

“…The hospitality industry [includes] theme parks, hotels, restaurants, cruises and event planning,” said Dr. Anne Albright, on-site coordinator for the ZORA! STEM Summer Camp who accompanied the students during their visit. “When we look at these places, we have an opportunity to also consider the STEM professionals who helped build and work in these places [like the] engineers and architects who build these structures, food scientists, etc.”

Rosen College frequently hosts young student groups like the ZORA! STEM Summer Camp to introduce them to hospitality-related careers and encourage them to take positive steps as they continue through school.

“It’s important to get young students excited about hospitality because the career options are abundant in Florida, especially Orlando,” said Genyth Travis, senior assistant director, UCF Undergraduate Admissions. “It’s our hope that when students visit [our] campus that we’ve encouraged them to get good grades, stay out of trouble, inspired future careers in the hospitality industry and encouraged them to return to UCF to earn a college degree.”

to view more photos from the ZORA! STEM Summer Camp’s visit to Rosen College.

Terry Ann Thaxton, an associate professor in the English department, doesn’t blame computers and technology, but rather the new communication techniques that make it easy to shortchange precise and lively writing.

“Computers have brought writing more to the foreground,” she said.  “Communication is part of being human, but social-media writing is taking out all the imaginative threads, all the description, all the interesting parts of language.”

Thaxton has taught at UCF since 2000, and also interacts with public school children during the year through The Literary Arts Partnership at UCF that she founded 10 years ago. The partnership offers free storytelling and poetry workshops to underserved children, youth and adults in Central Florida.

She said that when she first started offering the writing workshops she noticed that many of the children didn’t have an imagination, so they just gave up trying to write creatively.

“We had to show them how to pretend,” she said. Learning how to write creatively helps enhance an author’s literacy, attitude, character and self-awareness, which also benefits the community, she said.

Thaxton organized the July 9-13 writing camp at UCF after receiving requests from parents and seeing firsthand the increasing need for young writers to improve their skills.

“Also what I’ve noticed in the classrooms in public schools is that teachers are pressured into having high scores on the FCAT, so they focus on teaching just those skills but not the ‘meat’ of writing,” she said. “Creative writing allows students to draw from the raw materials of their life and be imaginative. You need your imagination for writing everything from journalism to a memo for your boss.”

And what are some simple tips to improve writing?

For starters, Thaxton said, tighten up sentences, don’t rely on spellchecking, and reduce reliance on adverbs.

“Many writers overuse adverbs by using one for every verb,” she said. “If you’re using too many of them, you’re probably not using the right verb.”

The summer writing camp will have morning and afternoon sessions at UCF Continuing Education, 12565 Research Parkway, Suite 390.

The morning session (9 to 11 a.m.) will study the basic structure of a screenplay as a starting point for writing stories and short scripts.

The afternoon session (1:30 to 3:30 p.m.) will focus on writing as an act of imagination, and memory as a source of ideas for creative nonfiction.

The fee for each session is $100, or both for $175. For more information or to register, go to http://ce.ucf.edu/creative. The deadline to register is July 5.

Proceeds will go toward supplies for The Literary Arts Partnership’s free writing workshops during the year at public schools, foster homes, community centers, residential treatment facilities, shelters, prisons, and assisted living facilities.

The ��AV will host its 9th-annual Burnett Honors College Summer Institute, an intensive three-week program designed for eighth- through 12th-grade students interested in learning the foundations of computer science and technology.

Students can learn Java programming at a beginner, intermediate or advanced level and choose an elective course in video game interfaces or artificial intelligence.

The curriculum also will allow students to enjoy special programs, speakers and recreational facilities and visit UCF’s research laboratories. Field trips will include a tour of the Electronic Arts Tiburon studio in Maitland, home to the creators of some of the world’s most popular video games.    

“This is a great opportunity for students to learn if they want to major in computer science or a related field such as digital media or engineering before having to pay for college tuition,” said Jill Norburn, director of Student Affairs for the Burnett Honors College.

The program fee of $995 includes tuition, books, field trips, a programming competition and more. Families with more than one sibling enrolled will receive a $100 discount.

The summer day camp begins Monday, July 11, and runs through Friday, July 29.  Applications are due Friday, May 20. Forms are available at .

For more information, visit the website.

To learn more about The Burnett Honors College, visit .

WHO: Students between the ages of 13-18

WHAT: A 3-week computer science summer camp! The UCF Burnett Honors College teaches students all about JAVA and Artificial Intelligence.

WHEN: July 12- 30, 2010 Monday – Friday from 9am to 5pm

WHERE: UCF main campus in the Burnett Honors College (Bldg 95)

WHY: Alumni of this program have gone on to schools such as Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Harvard, MIT, Yale or any state school of their choice. Some high schools have awarded the students high school credit for the program.

WEBSITE:

COST: $995 covers the courses and electives; textbooks, materials, ID cards, field trips, speakers, shirt, and closing ceremony.

QUESTIONS? Contact Maria-Cristina Nieves at (407) 823-0846 or mcnieves@mail.ucf.edu or Dr. Jill Norburn at jnorburn@mail.ucf.edu

Applications are due May 21.