Unified Fitness has the Power to Bring People Together

Jessica Baldwin, School of Health and Kinesiology assistant professor and community advocate, focuses on inclusivity with those with intellectual disabilities through Unified Fitness.

Baldwin, who founded Unified Fitness in 2018, first sparked an interest in giving her students more opportunities to connect with diverse populations with her kinesiology practicum students.

“This was another way to get my students exposure to a variety of individuals,” Baldwin says. The program includes people with and without intellectual disabilities. With a diverse set of students, this brings them together in a new type of experience.

“This helps them participate in fitness, education and really fun workouts and also to build friendships between everybody,” Baldwin says. “It’s really what we wanted for the program, and it’s done exactly that.”

In Unified Fitness, all students can participate on the same team, inspired by the principle of training together and leads to a path of friendship and understanding. This means that students who participate in Unified Fitness connect with a diverse community. Currently, there are programs at UNO and Papillion South High School.

“With the high school students, there’s actually more participants. We do it in the morning before school and also have more Unified partners that come in,” Baldwin says. “Papillion South is a Unified champion school and does so much with Unified Fitness that comes natural to them.”

With fitness and friendship as a factor, many students who get involved enjoy the events and meeting new people. Most events are held during the fall and spring semesters when classes meet twice a week. Baldwin says, “Fitness programs and workouts last an hour.” Sometimes students meet outside of class, such as going to a hockey game together.

Unified Fitness has the potential to spread throughout the Omaha metro. The teams are built up from people of a similar age and ability, which can make practices exciting and more challenging. “Our goal is to get into more schools eventually, not just high schools, hopefully, middle schools, grade schools and get the Unified Fitness programs at every school,” Baldwin says.

Baldwin remains passionate in her commitment to diversity and inclusion. “Every time I go, I have so much fun with the participants and watching my students grow with the participants as well is really good,” Baldwin says. “Seeing them change their perspective of working with individuals with disabilities is rewarding because many of the students end up wanting to work with this population because they end up loving it so much.”