ROSSFORD, Ohio — Occupational therapy practitioners, educators and students across the country joined together Thursday to help others "Live Life To Its Fullest" by avoiding the pain and injury that can come from heavy backpacks and bags.
That includes the first-year occupational therapy students at Owens Community College, who have only been in the program for five weeks.
"An occupation is just something that a person enjoys to do, they love to do it whether it be running, working out, knitting, playing with their kids, cooking, cleaning, anything like that. Whatever makes them happy doing it, so we're here to help people get back to their best quality of life as independently and to make them as happy as possible," said Hannah Fogel. She is one of those students commuting every day from Walbridge.
Their best advice is, only take what you need and leave the rest in the car or a locker, swapping it out throughout the day.
If you don't have that luxury, put the heavy items like a laptop closest to you and the lighter stuff on the outside.
You also want to make sure the straps are tight and the backpack remains within two inches of your body.
These students are learning to be proactive, reaching out to everyone who passes through to teach them how to pack their backpacks correctly.
Sarah Heldmann currently works in the field, but also as an Occupational Therapy Professor at Owens Community College.
"We don't want to see them at occupational therapy because they have a back injury from their backpacks, so believe it or not, there's a lot of injuries every year from backpacks being too heavy, so not only how to pack it, but how to lift it appropriately using squatting and bending at the knees to lift up those heavy bags," she explained.
Experts say, you want your bag to be 10%of your body weight or less, so for these petite college students who weigh less than 150 pounds, a 15-pound bag would be too heavy.
"This is our fourth year doing this now here on campus and we always just have a good turnout of students. We have students come back every year of, 'Hey, you weighed my backpack last year and look, I'm packing it better now!' so, it's fun," said Heldmann smiling.
You can find more information on AOTA’s National School Backpack Awareness Day and next year's events here.
More information about Owens Community College Occupational Therapy Assistant five semester program can be found here.