Item 5. SCHOOL-AGE HEALTH and SAFETY

Expand Physical Education to Reduce Childhood Obesity
Obesity has become the second most preventable cause of death behind tobacco use. Since 1980, obesity has doubled among children and tripled among adolescents. The culprits are clear: poor nutrition and inadequate physical activity. The consequences are dire: obese children miss four times more school than healthy-weight children. Obesity-related diseases like Type 2 diabetes, once thought to occur only in adults, are becoming more prevalent in young children, causing medical costs to soar.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a five-part strategy to help states bring obesity under control. Programmatic and policy goals should include:

• Limiting intake of foods of low-nutritional value
  
• Increasing physical activity
  
• Increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables
  
• Reducing television / computer time
  
• Increasing breastfeeding

Since 2004, the Oklahoma Fit Kids Coalition has successfully promoted this strategy with the Oklahoma Legislature. New laws have been enacted to get junk food out of schools, re-establish physical education in elementary schools, create local Healthy and Fit School Advisory Committees in each school and create the Farm to School Program to improve the nutrition of Oklahoma’s students by providing schools with locally grown fresh produce. The Coalition also supported legislation promoting breastfeeding and “TV Turn-Off Week.”

Yet despite these efforts, obesity rates in children have remain unchanged.

Physicians recommend that children participate in 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day, at least five days per week. Since students spend half of their day in school, it is recommended that half the daily requirement (150 minutes per week) occur at school. In 2005, when this proposal was brought to the Oklahoma legislature, a compromise was reached to address concerns from school districts regarding scheduling and space limitations. The final bill, SB 312, requires 60 minutes per week of physical education in grades K-5.

These efforts are laudable and prove the willingness and commitment from parents, schools and communities to work together to meet the needs of their students. But as obesity rates continue to rise, more must be done to get children moving and eating better.

Fact Sheets: 
Childhood Obesity SB 1186
Expand Access to Health Care HB 2574

Additional Resource:
Active Education: Physical Education, Physical Activity and Academic Performance, (PDF) Active Living Research, a Research Brief from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Fall 2007
In schools across the United States, physical education has been substantially reduced-and in some cases completely eliminated...