BodiMojo Blog

The year’s end often brings reflections on the good and the bad, the best and the worst, but BodiMojo is too new to have such perspective. Looking back, we are immensely proud to have won a Small Business Innovative Research Award from the National Institutes of Health – seed money – to get our online teen health destination off the ground. Four months into the project we have a stealth team of designers, programmers, writers, health experts, and mostly importantly, teens on board to help steer the way.  It’s a tall order to make health interesting to kids, so we’ll look to teens to make it cool – without overtly saying it’s cool.

BodiMojo. Teens helped coin our name. And now we are growing into our identity.  Healthy habits. Healthy body. Healthy image. Motivation. Mojo.

And while we are in a full out R&D mode in 2009, we are inviting teens to intern, participate in user groups, create content, and form a youth advisory group.  Looking ahead, and without revealing too much, BodiMojo aims to incentivise and motivate kids to adopt healthy lifestyle habits, track their goals, and integrate apps and widgets into their already established social network profiles, to name a few.  We plan to launch the beta site in the summer and conduct a field test among four high schools this fall.  That’s just around the corner.

We operate with a sense of urgency because the reality is that there are more overweight and obese kids than ever before; cheap and fast foods have replaced the good ol’ bag lunch and family dinner; physical activity education (aka gym class) has been reduced or cut from curriculums; the media bombards with unrealistic images of attractiveness, not to mention violence and sex without consequences; kids engage in more extreme behaviors, including dieting, restrictive eating or binging. Oh, and of course there are other very serious concerns confronting teens:  binge drinking, bullying, depression, drugs, tobacco, and unprotected sex.  We can’t cover it all – right away – but “BodiMojo” is about fostering an attitude – or “boditude” – taking care of body and mind by making sound choices.

Healthy habits.  They are formed by the time a young adult graduates from college or enters the workforce. Yes, health habits are firmly established in the early 20s.  So there’s a huge window of opportunity with kids ages 13-19.

Our resolve for the New Year:  That BodiMojo will become a premier go-to resource for teens.

Cheers!

– Contributed by Tara Cousineau, Ph.D., Adolescent at Heart