Ramsey Rehab teaches backpack safety

Physical therapist Sarah Wright, PT, DPT, went to schools in Westminster and Ashburnham as well as in Leominster, Fitchburg and Lunenburg to show fifth graders how proper posture and backpack use minimizes back pain or injury.

Wright is a physical therapist with Ramsey Rehab, which is based in Leominster. She has experience in children's health and exercise science.

Ramsey Rehab held the program this month to celebrate National Physical Therapy Month. The goal of this program was to help ease the burden overstuffed backpacks have on children's backs.

Now in its third year, Ramsey Rehab has educated hundreds of fifth-grade students on backpack safety and how their backpacks might contribute to back pain in the future.

Over $24 billion per year is spent on back pain in the US.

The group offered some tips to parents and students for managing backpacks correctly. Those tips include the suggestion that backpacks weigh less than 15 percent of body weight, which for example means a 100 pound person should not carry a backpack over 15 pounds.

Other tips focus on how to pack the backpack for the best way to carry items, such as placing the heaviest items closest to the back; using both shoulder straps firmly tightened to hold the pack two inches above the waist; and adjust chest and waist strap to distribute weight evenly along the back.

Wright also reviewed with the students the correct lifting technique, which is to bend with both knees and lift with the legs. The other suggestion is to consider a backpack on wheels but remember that students may still have to lift these bags.

For more info, go to www. RamseyRehab.com.