US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-Based Physical Activity Recommendations Do Not Improve Fitness in Real-World Settings.
Tasa Seibert, David B Allen, Jens C Eickhoff and 1 others
PMID 30632155WHAT IT FOUND
CDC school physical activity strategies did not improve children's fitness compared with routine programming.
Girls in intervention schools did not improve on the shuttle-run fitness test, while control girls improved slightly.
Key findings
01The CDC-based physical activity program did not add fitness benefit over routine school programming; control schools showed a greater change in PACER scores than intervention schools (p < .001).
02Girls in intervention schools had no significant change from baseline in mean PACER (p = .796) or PACER z-score (p = .692), while girls in control schools had small increases.
03Only 13 intervention schools reported completing all four strategies, and excluding schools with less than full compliance did not change the fitness findings.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
Fitness was measured with PACER, a shuttle-run test that depends on how hard a child tries, not on direct measurement of physical activity. The study could not directly observe or standardize how well the schools delivered the four strategies, and many schools did not report completing all of them. The control schools' usual programming was not defined or controlled, so the comparison is with whatever routine activity those schools already provided. The study was done in low-income Wisconsin schools where implementation was likely harder, so it may not apply to better-resourced settings. Baseline PACER scores differed for girls between intervention and control schools, although the main outcome was change from baseline.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest statement appears in the article text. The article is listed as supported by NIH extramural funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the control group's greater change as evidence the CDC strategies harmed fitness. Both groups improved from baseline, and the study tested added benefit over routine programming, not harm.