Dr. Benden to Present on Stand-biased Classrooms at CDC Lecture

Mark Benden, Ph.D., CPE, assistant professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, will present an invited lecture at the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on using stand-biased classrooms to combat childhood obesity and promote child learning. The presentation will be Oct. 16 in Atlanta.

Dr. Benden was one of the first researchers in the nation to begin researching the effects of sedentary behavior on health while offering practical interventions to combat growing waistlines at a time when most researchers were simply trying to accommodate larger people in an ever-growing array of under-sized products.

Dr. Benden first became interested in the benefits of using stand-biased desks in the workplace and subsequently published a book in 2007 on the subject. In Could You Stand to Lose? Weight Loss Secrets for Office Workers, he championed stand-biased workstations to break-up the duration and pattern of excessive sitting.

More recent epidemiological studies have confirmed the position he postulated regarding the adverse health effects of sitting, including cardio-metabolic risks and shortened life expectancy.

Dr. Benden has been conducting research since 1998 into practical ways to get children and adults up and moving in the office and in school to reduce sedentary behavior and obesity while improving attention and focus. He received two patents in 2011 for stand-biased desk designs for children and adults.

“The increase in technology induced inactivity, screen time and health-related co-morbidity is unfortunately driving us to develop more creative methods of improving physical activity,” Dr. Benden stated.