Making a positive impact on people’s health is what Dawn O’Bar is all about. Whether as a health educator, as a fitness instructor, or in her most recent job as coordinator for Sansum-Santa Barbara Medical Foundation’s newly opened Health Resource Center, her main goal is to help people stay informed and up to date on the latest health issues.

"I was actually a director of physical activity at the YMCA and realized that was my calling, that I enjoyed health education," she said.

Born in Indiana, O’Bar (née Michaels) moved to the area 26 years ago to study at UCSB. "I came because of the weather, and I felt that this wasn’t that big a place, like Los Angeles," she said.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in law and working various jobs, including as a travel agent and in a juvenile justice delinquency program, she found out her true passion was helping others live healthy lives. She inherited that from her father, who taught health education at the high school level. The counseling skills she developed while a law student, however, she found was "a very useful tool" for her current field.

Not only has she been a fitness instructor for the last 16 years (she now teaches yoga at Santa Barbara and Goleta Valley Athletic Clubs) and a health educator for weight management and smoking cessation, in the last three years she co-authored a pediatric weight management program alongside clinic pediatricians, a clinic dietitician, and counselor.

"Twenty-five percent of kids under 12 are considered to be overweight. That’s one in four," she said. "I think it’s scary because we’re looking at children as being our future generation and already they’re starting out with a huge population of kids that could … have diseases that impact their health…and the healthcare system. The problem I see is that people in (our) society are not really doing anything to change it. We’re not promoting physical activity to our youth."

Called CHAMP (Childhood Health Awareness Mentoring Program), the program is designed to teach both children and their parents about exercise and nutrition, in order to create a healthy lifestyle at an early age.

O’Bar currently serves as the coordinator for the Health Resource Center, at SSBMFC’s Foundation branch at Pesetas Lane. Her job is to assist anyone who comes in to find the appropriate information, from the most common to the most obscure medical conditions.

"Hopefully I can help them find the information they’re looking for," she said.

In her spare time she likes to maintain her own healthy lifestyle through her yoga practice, spending time with her family, reading, or bicycling around the area. She and her husband Kevin reside in the unincorporated "Noleta" area with her son Scott, who is soon to be a junior at Dos Pueblos High School. Their older daughter Kelly goes to UC Davis.

While her biggest project — to build the Health Resource Center into an important source of information for members of the community — is "a challenge," O’Bar is more excited than daunted.

"It’s a learning process for me," she said. "I think it’s a great starting place."

Photo Credit: Sonia Fernandez

Caption: Dawn O’Bar is a fitness instructor, a health educator on the subjects of weight management and quitting smoking, and the co-author of a pediatric weight-management program.