Brad Roy, executive director of The Summit Medical Fitness Center, exudes the good health and energy that have been his life’s passion to give others.

“I love people and helping people make changes and have a higher quality of life,” he said.

The winner of several marathons and a former high school track star, Roy, 58, still loves to run outside but settles for his home treadmill or The Summit’s indoor track during the Flathead Valley’s long winter months. He quotes study after study documenting the importance of movement for health and especially for brain function, alertness and learning.

“The other thing I do for my fitness that I think is really important is I do some weight training,” he said. “My weight routine takes 20 minutes and I do that religiously three times a week.”

Even in his office, he makes it a habit to move, citing recent research on the ill effects of sitting. On Tuesday morning, Roy’s newest activity-tracking device called an accelerometer revealed that he had taken over 11,000 steps, put in over 5 miles and burned about 1,300 calories before noon.

His program powers him through an exhausting list of responsibilities running the 114,800-square-foot Summit Medical Fitness Center along with overseeing a number of Kalispell Regional Medical Center departments.

Roy also plays an active role in The American College of Sports Medicine and works with the Medical Fitness Association and the National Sanitation Foundation.The sanitation foundation, a broad-based accrediting organization, joined with the sports medicine group to put together comprehensive fitness facility standards and guidelines due for publishing this year.

“They pulled together a group of experts from every industry related to fitness,” Roy said. “There were about 10 of us on this committee.”

He was tapped in 2008 to work on the first edition of Standards and Guidelines for Medical Fitness Centers for the Medical Fitness Association.

“This year, I just published the second edition of those standards and guidelines,” he said. “We added some things — the first edition didn’t really have anything about kids. Kids have become a big piece of a lot of our centers.“

As if these weren’t enough responsibilities, he also serves on the College of Sports Medicine’s committee overseeing its certifications of fitness professionals, from personal trainers to clinical exercise physiologists, to meet the rigorous accreditation standards mandated by the NCCA( National Commission for Certifying Agencies ).

“At The Summit and many of our facilities, we require that people who work here have a certification that is NCCA accredited,” he said.

Growing up in Carlsbad, Calif., Roy envisioned himself with a career in sports. At first he didn’t see himself in the medical realm although his grandfather was an orthopedic surgeon and his extended family included more physicians.

“Being a track athlete, I was always very interested in sports and I thought I would become a teacher and a coach,” he said.

Following high school, he attended MiraCosta (Community) College, running cross country and track. He then received a track scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree from Point Loma Nazarene College and then a master’s in exercise physiology from San Diego State.

After coaching at a couple of high schools, he moved into coaching cross country and track at MiraCosta College.

“Our 1979 cross country team won the California state championship,” he said.

From there, he spent 9 months helping a cardiologist with treadmill testing and other duties in Bishop, Calif., before accepting a staff position with Campus Crusade for Christ’s Athletes In Action track team that took him to Eugene, Ore.

“That was the running capital of the nation,” Roy said. “That’s where I met my wife Susan. She grew up in Eugene.”

Engaged and headed for marriage, he decided he needed a more substantial position when he found one in 1982 at the Oregon Heart Center at Sacred Heart Medical Center operating the cardiopulmonary testing equipment. He also taught part time at the University of Oregon while completing his doctorate in exercise physiology.

At work one day in 1995, he noticed an ad for a director for a medical fitness center under construction in Kalispell. Roy recalled throwing down the journal and asking who would want to move to Montana.

“Someone challenged me to call and the next thing I knew I was moving to Montana,” he said. “I’ve never looked back and never regretted it. It’s an awesome community with awesome people.”

He arrived in November of 1995 with his wife, daughter Heather and son Stewart. The Summit opened in January of 1996.

Roy’s job was to develop this cutting-edge concept of integrating medical care such as cardiac rehabilitation within a fitness center.

“Our model here — it’s integrated out on the main fitness floor. Our patients are out there with all of our members at the same time,” he said. “We’ve done that with many of our other clinical programs at the facility.”

Today, many facilities are designed for integration, Roy said.

“They’ve gotten huge. Part of it is, they’ve grabbed market share,” Roy said. “People want to go to doctors at the fitness facility.”

When The Summit opened, there were less than 100 facilities along the medical fitness model. They now number 1,200 and continue to grow here and internationally.

Roy said he doesn’t see physical activity being pushed in the United States at the level that it needs to be. Even if people get 30 minutes of exercise each day, he said they still face a pretty high risk of chronic disease if they spend the rest of the day sitting.

“The concept is we need to get people moving throughout the day. That may be as simple as every time the phone rings, you take the phone call standing up,” he said. “You take short little walk breaks.”

Roy said The Summit has seen very good outcomes in its “Journey to Wellness Program,” which coaches inactive people and those with chronic health conditions to integrate activity and good nutrition into their lives. This program, directed by Dr. Pam Roberts, reflects the medical input and oversight that distinguishes The Summit as the only certified medical fitness center in Montana and one of only about 60 in the United States.

“We have a physician advisory committee with physicians from different disciplines that meet quarterly,” he said. “They help us set up our programs and make sure everything we do here is medically and scientifically sound.”

With a staff including physicians, nurses, physical therapists and graduate-trained exercise physiologists, The Summit has continued to grow even as fitness facilities large and small have opened in the valley.

“This past February we just hit our highest membership ever. We are now at 7,452 members,” he said. “We get everything from the elite athlete to the very sick heart failure patient.”

Roy credits this success to his employees’ talent, insight and commitment to helping people. He said he has always told the staff that he wants The Summit to be part of the community.

He considers the center’s scholarship program an important element to ensure finances are never an issue.

“That’s why I think we have been very broad-based from doing things with youth all the way through seniors,” Roy said. “A lot of people ask ‘Why doesn’t The Summit just have a focus?’ It’s because I think there are needs all across those groups.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.