Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (CABVI) received a grant from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation to create opportunities for individuals to participate in the National Fitness Challenge.
National Fitness Challenge participants at Monthly Team Rally Meeting.
Back row from L to R: Chris Windham, Jeffrey Tolliver, Dave Perry, April McKinney, Mary Ann Donelan, Jerome Harden, Mike Breeden, Pierre McDonald, Joseph Clements.
Front Row: Paula Grubbs, Angela Taylor, Phillip “Scott” Hogan, Anthony Steele, Deb Cook (provided photo).
The Challenge is an initiative founded by the United States Association of Blind Athletes (USABA) and the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation.
CABVI is one of 17 organizations participating in the National Fitness Challenge.
The program highlights ideas such as adaptive yoga classes, walking groups, running clinics and other fitness activities that can help people who are blind or low-vision to maximize healthy lifestyles. The activities will be offered over the course of eight months to help hundreds of youth and adults to increase physical fitness levels and live healthier lives.
Each participant has been provided with a Fitbit Flex 2 wearable – a universal way to measure activities, calories burned and number of steps taken. Foundation grant funding is being used to provide Fitbits, fitness and nutritional instruction, performance prizes as well as technical and financial support for all participants.
Since 1911, CABVI has provided counseling, rehabilitation, information and employment services to people of all ages in the Greater Cincinnati region. Through all of its programs and services, it strives to help those who are blind, visually or print impaired lead full and independent lives. For more information about CABVI, click here.
At the recent CABVI Monthly Team Rally Meeting, CABVI’s athletes received their USABA National Fitness Challenge t-shirts along with the opportunity to register as participants in the agency’s 20th Annual Yes You Can 5K. One of Cincinnati’s largest inclusive 5K’s, it will take place on Sunday, June 9, beginning at 8:30 am in Spring Grove Arboretum.
Online registration is available now at www.cincyblind.org or call 513-221-8558 for more information.
More than half of those who are blind or low vision in the United States do not participate in even a limited physical fitness routine, mostly due to barriers to accessible fitness or misconceptions about their abilities.
A Notional Fitness Challenge goal is to allow individuals of all abilities to have equal opportunities to engage in activities that improve health outcomes. To that end, it aims to increase access to fitness and health for blind and low vision people.
Since 2011, the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation has provided $1.3 million in grant funding to U.S. Association of Blind Athletes for the National Fitness Challenge initiative and has impacted thousands of Americans with visual disabilities by partnering with 40 different agencies across the country. To learn more about the National Fitness Challenge, click here.
CABVI
