(18932) This study is a description of the challenges teachers face in their attempts to live a healthy lifestyle. In Trinidad and Tobago, risk factors for the leading causes of morbidity and mortality are related to lifestyle practices. The diseases are hypertension, diabetes, heart diseases and cancers while the risk factors are unhealthy dietary practices, lack of physical exercise, high levels of stress, cigarette smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. In addition to the benefits that accrue to teachers when they practice healthy lifestyles, they are also well positioned to be role models to their students. The question: “What do you think are some of factors that are militating against teachers’ practice of healthy lifestyles?”, was posed as an online discussion topic to secondary school teachers enrolled in a postgraduate in-service diploma in education program. This was a follow up to a previous lecture on health and wellbeing. The findings revealed that teachers were unanimous in their responses of being unable to practice healthy lifestyles due to administrative and personal barriers. Major themes emerging from discussion threads were – lack of support staff like secretaries and teaching assistants, resulting in work overload, high stress levels and burnout; commuting for long hours and traffic congestion precluding time to prepare healthy meals or engage in physical exercise resulting in poor nutrition and obesity; high prevalence of students’ indiscipline coupled with unreasonable demands of central and school administrators leading to high stress levels among teachers. Teachers are therefore unable to be healthy lifestyle role models.
