Lecturer leads in new health resource
Nathan Brown
Master of Arts (Research) student
Avondale College of Higher Education
Crandall, Georgia, USA
An Avondale lecturer has played a key role in renewing a leading worldwide health resource that has launched in the United States.
Co-presenters of the new CHIP DVD series Dr Darren Morton and Dr Hans Diehl.
Dr Darren Morton is a co-presenter of the new Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP) DVD series and a contributing writer to an integrated textbook, a participant’s journal and a recipe book.
“I’ve always been interested in helping people live more,” says Darren, a senior lecturer in health and exercise science in the School of Education, “and CHIP is arguably the most well-published lifestyle intervention in the research literature. We’ve updated the program and incorporated the latest evidence to produce an even better program.”
Some 270 CHIP facilitators, health leaders and health professionals agreed, applauding the launch of the resources during the CHIP Summit at the Cohutta Springs Conference Center in Georgia, USA, November 15-18.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific purchased CHIP to renew and relaunch it under the leadership and management of Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing in Australia. “CHIP has been setting the church up to be a centre of influence in the community, bringing great results and bringing the church’s health message to life,” says Cathy McDonald, general manager of Sanitarium’s Health and Wellbeing Services. “We also saw the potential to update it.”
Consensus about the measurable clinical outcomes of the existing program is more significant. Early this year, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine described research on CHIP participants published by Darren and Avondale PhD student Pr Paul Rankin in the American Journal of Cardiology as “some of the most impressive recorded clinical changes ever.”
Developing the new program has taught Darren “a lot more about the role of nutrition in wellbeing. And it’s given me a greater appreciation of how the foundations of the Adventist health message are so relevant to our communities today.”
Cathy sees CHIP as becoming “the world’s biggest lifestyle medicine and disease reversal program,” which, she adds, will “add significantly to the medical missionary work of the church. We want to support local churches to be centres of health, hope and healing.”
CHIP Summit Australia, February 1-3, 2013, Avondale College of Higher Education