In this month’s career profile meet Katie Mann who is passionate about getting us active. Katie is an Active Transport Practitioner with Cycle Sense which she started with a friend in 2007. The focus is on cycling skills and road safety instruction.
What inspired you towards a career in health promotion?
I think I have to attribute my inspiration to my Dad. He was a community guy, loved life and people, having fun and deeply caring for those around him. I too like to work with people and to enable opportunities for fun, health and practical achievements. Cycling is a great medium for this. I believe the environment plays an intrinsic role in human health and well-being and cycling as active transport can contribute to healthy environments. Being active has improved by own well-being and my knowledge of the same inspires me to enable people to take up active transport. I would have to say that the inspiration for my cycle training career came from my children and their friends and seeing their enjoyment of cycling games and structured skills development. I was given the opportunity to run a cycling course in the local community and I was inspired by one of my colleagues to get tutor cycle training which led to the start of a small company delivering cycle training county wide. Training with SHEP (Social Health Education Project) encouraged me to facilitate groups and individuals through awareness of myself, others and group processes.
Health Promotion roles are very varied. Meet Ronan Dillon who is self-employed and works as a Health and Wellbeing co-ordinator in Temple Street Children’s Hospital as well as being the Director of Healthy Workforce.
What inspired you towards a career in health promotion?
Health Promotion was not something I had even thought about when I was doing my Leaving Cert. I had always wanted to do something in sport, so I assumed physiotherapy would be my only option. Thankfully a friend told me about Sport Science in DCU. This gave me a much broader view of what kinds of sports-related jobs were available. Through sports science I realised that the increase in non-communicable diseases was a problem. I went on to play rugby in England and France and it was here that I began to explore health promotion as a career.