By Julie PriceAs a 12-year-old growing up in the San Fernando Valley, exercise science major Moises Velasquez took up running. He ran around his suburban Los Angeles neighborhood almost daily throughout his youth, and then he never stopped. In the decade since he began, Velasquez has gone on to log thousands of miles competitively and for sport.
Running has taken him far in many ways, but Velasquez does not see himself as a natural athlete.
“When I started running, it didn’t feel like a calling,” he said. “I think it was more shallow. I wanted to see how fast I could get. And it felt good to run. Also, I did have a problem with soda drinking when I was young. I thought, ‘If I exercise, I can drink more soda.’ As a 12-year-old, that’s about as far as my thinking went.”
With humility and understatement, Velasquez has turned his logical thinking into a college degree, a career path and, as it happens, a calling.
As he prepares to graduate in May with a degree that emphasizes health professions, Velasquez looks to a future in service, helping culturally depressed and idle youths adopt exercise as a tool to grow into happy, healthy, productive adults. “I’m in a place where I can give back to others,” he said. “I want to express what I’ve learned.”
A runner and a scholar
Velasquez’s study focus has sharpened in his senior year, with his capstone research project aimed squarely at helping low-income Latino youths. The project is looking at the impact of a 16-week, at-home training program on their levels of anxiety and depression.
The decision to focus on Hispanic youths was logical: “The Latino community is very underserviced when it comes to (fitness) research and guidelines for them,” Velasquez explained. “I grew up in a very Latino-dense population area, and you can see the discrepancies between that and, say, a higher-income overall place.”
His capstone assignment is Velasquez’s third research project at Cal Lutheran. Feeding from his previous research, which determined the young Latino demographic is at a higher risk than others for early obesity, anxiety and depression, this final project seeks solutions. (It’s title: “How a 16-week, at-home-based training program impacts levels of anxiety and depression in Hispanic low-income communities.”)
With far broader societal implications, this project targets a test group of about 100 10- to 19-year-olds in South Gate, a predominantly Latino community and one of the most depressed areas of Los Angeles.
Supported by Cal Lutheran’s McNair Scholars Program and his faculty mentor, Velasquez has spent the better part of a year putting together his exercise video training program. Using himself as the instructor, he has created 32 one-hour videos for the twice-weekly, 16-week program, which is geared for youths to do from home.
The content is straightforward and easy to follow, but the process has been an exercise in patience and perseverance for Velasquez, who’s had to navigate through mounds of red tape to gain approvals.
“Since we’re working with underage children, first of all, we have to get an Institutional Review Board (IRB) paper done, and then we have to get it approved,” he explained. “From there, our research methods have to be approved by the IRB faculty here at the school. From there, we have to get the parents’ consent, and we have to get the consent of the schools that we’re working with. So it’s been a lot of back and forth. … A lot.”
In December, the project was finally nearing liftoff. Velasquez is confident it will be completed before he graduates. When it’s done, he hopes to demonstrate that exercise has a significant positive impact on anxiety and depression in youths. “I hope to show how exercise, even two days out of the week, is beneficial to children psychologically,” he says.
Giving thanks
As his undergraduate education winds down, Velasquez expresses deep gratitude to his supportive family and to the many people at Cal Lutheran who have helped him, including his research partner, Samira Negrete, and his longtime faculty mentor, Louise Kelly, PhD, associate professor of exercise science in the College of Arts and Sciences.
A graduate of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, with advanced degrees in physiology and sports science and in medical faculty, Kelly has mentored Velasquez since she led his first-year seminar at Cal Lutheran.
“That’s when he became interested in the type of research that I do, and I was happy to have him,” said Kelly, who’s been at the university for 16 years. “He’s always been invested in health, preventative and rehabilitative health in people, and it seems to be his lifelong passion, which I applaud and identify with.”
What makes him stand out from other students? “I think with Moises, he’s very unassuming,” Kelly said. “I think that’s one of his strengths. He knows what he doesn’t know. He has no false pride or ego. He just is a really nice, genuine young man who wants to help people, and who has compassion and empathy. I think it’s an old soul in a young body with Moises. … He cares about people.”
After graduation, Velasquez plans to get his doctorate in physical therapy and eventually open a physical therapy clinic with the ultimate goal of funding nonprofit clinics in lower-income areas.
“My life goal itself is to give resources and education to my community, the San Fernando Valley, so that children can be equal in every other sense,” said Velasquez, who grew up in Van Nuys and now lives in Canoga Park.
“Every once in a while, as a kid, I was the last chosen,” Velasquez said. “Seeing my friends getting picked on … that motivated me. You don’t need money for a gym membership; you don’t even need equipment. As long as you want to do exercise, you can do that. … Even a little bit will make you enjoy life a little bit more. Exercise makes you enjoy life, and that goes for everyone.”
