Background: Internationally 18% of youth are obese. Fitness testing can be used to establish fitness surveillance, which can inform policy and targeted interventions aimed at addressing obesity. The purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and low fitness in Idaho school-aged youth through a pilot study.…

Purpose: This study aims to (a) examine elementary school students' health-related fitness knowledge growth under one curriculum condition and (b) examine the impacts of student/school-level factors on health-related fitness knowledge and its growth rate in physical education. Method: We used an observational, longitudinal repeated-measures…

To validate the modified System for Observing Fitness Instruction Time to measure teacher practices related to physical activity promotion (SOFIT+) in physical education (PE) amongst 5-6-year-old-children. Participants (n = 162, 53% female, 6.0 ± 0.3 yrs) were recruited from 9 schools. Video-recordings of 45 PE lessons from 9 teachers/coaches were…

In large, urban school districts, few programs currently exist that support students' physical and mental wellness. In fall 2014, one large, urban school district piloted a health and wellness program in ten elementary schools. Accompanying this program, a three-year research study was designed to learn if students experience changes in their…

Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service provided elementary school students with a program that included a noncompetitive physical activity component: circuit training that combined cardiovascular, strength, and flexibility activities without requiring high skill levels. The intent was to improve fitness without focusing on body mass index as an…

By now, we are all aware of the effect of super-sized food portions. Very young children regulate their food intake by internal cues (when they feel full) rather than by portion size. As children age, external cues have more influence than internal cues. Hence, larger portion sizes promote more energy intake in older children, leading to caloric…

Children's participation in physical activity is a leading health indicator to combat obesity and sedentary lifestyles. The challenge to battle this problem is placed in the hands of early childhood educators. However, there is little evidence that early childhood educators have the skills and knowledge to design and implement appropriate movement…

The incidence of childhood obesity amongst preschool-aged children has increased dramatically in recent years and can be attributed, in part, to a lack of physical activity amongst children in this age group. This study explores the social factors that stand to limit and/or enable children's physical activity opportunities in outdoor settings in…

Background: Physical Education (PE) programmes are expanding to include alternative activities yet what is missing is a conceptual model that facilitates how the learning process may be understood and assessed beyond the dominant sport-technique paradigm. Purpose: The purpose of this article was to feature the emergence of a Function-to-Flow (F2F)…

The purpose of this article was to highlight important research needs related to physical activity in 3-to 5-year-old children. We identified research needs in 3 major categories: health effects, patterns of physical activity, and interventions and policies. The top research needs include identifying the health effects of physical activity, the…

The Eagle Adventure program was designed as a semester-long, SNAP-Ed program to address food and physical activity choices important for prevention of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other chronic diseases. The program was developed for implementation in Grades 1-3. This article presents findings from two participating grade centers inclusive of…

High levels of physical inactivity are evident among many American children. To address this problem, providing physical activity (PA) during the school day within the CSPAP framework, is one strategy to increase children's PA. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a classroom-based PA program on children's PA. Two hundred…

Child obesity research has generally not examined multiple layers of parent-child relationships during weight-related activities such as feeding, eating and play. A literature review was conducted to locate empirical studies that measured parent-child interactions and child eating and child weight variables; five papers met the inclusion criteria…

Little attention has been given to the developmental process of "how children learn to move" and the changing role that emerging motor competence may play in children and youths' physical activity levels as they grow. But we need to recognize that there is a developmental trajectory to physical activity and the factors that affect it if we are…