EIT - P-PALs 2 - People with Intellectual Disabilities as Physical Activity Leaders
PPALS2 is a leadership programme designed to engage and promote individuals with intellectual disability as physical activity leaders. It follows the successful role out of the programme in 2018 at which time 15 individuals in Ireland and 20 individuals in the University of Barcelona were trained to be PPALS leaders, leading games and physical activity among their peers. In PPALS2 an additional element called ‘Ageing with Confidence’ was included in Ireland. Led by Age & Opportunity this additional programme supported individuals explore and grow their confidence. All programmes were delivered successfully online in Ireland. TUM adopted a hybrid model of delivery online and in person outdoors as their restrictions during COVID19 allowed this. However, in Spain, the impact of the pandemic was extensive and the University of Barcelona team were not able to visit in person or do live sessions so they developed physical activity videos to support the training of all the individuals with intellectual disability. These can be accessed here.
In total across the three countries 56 PPALS were trained. Considering the challenging year this is a great achievement for the team and for those individuals with intellectual disability who led peer to peer activities in their homes and online line.
Consortium Partners: Age & Opportunity, University of Barcelona, and the Technische Universität München (TUM)
P.I. Biography
Ussher Assistant Professor in Ageing and Intellectual Disability
Dr Burke was appointed as the Ussher Assistant Professor in Ageing and Intellectual Disability, TCD in September 2016. She originally trained as a general nurse and then in the field of intellectual disability now having over 25 years’ experience in this area.
Her specific area of interest is bone health and health assessment with her related research interests include physical health and wellbeing, inclusionary methods of healthcare screening and healthcare engagement, accessible health promotion and promoting research involvement of people with intellectual disability.
Her research is situated within the Intellectual Disability Supplement to The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (IDS-TILDA) where she has worked for 10 years. She designed an accessible health assessment in 2013 for inclusion in the longitudinal study and led its roll out in the second wave of data collection and now in Wave 4 of the IDS-TILDA study.
Dr. Burke is the Associate Director of the Trinity Center for Ageing and Intellectual Disability (TCAID) and is leading the physical health theme of the TCAID guiding the future focus of this theme. Dr Burke is the PI of the EIT Health European project ‘Get Wise about your Health’ developing health education programmes for individuals with intellectual disability. Administratively Dr. Burke is the Director of the Masters in Ageing Health and Wellbeing in Intellectual Disability in the School of Nursing and Midwifery in TCD, which is a new and unique course she designed underpinned and led by the research emanating from the IDS-TILDA study. Dr Burke is a committed teacher and has been involved in education throughout her career. Her contribution to education and the profession has included co-ordination and development of modules and courses at undergraduate and post graduate level and she is currently the external examiner at Queens University Belfast. She has extensive experience supervising students at masters and PhD level. Dr. Burke has a number of publications and has disseminated widely through national and international conferences.
