Approximately one-third of boys and girls ages 12-19 in the United States do not meet standards for physical fitness, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Russell R. Pate, a researcher in the Arnold School of Public Health, led the study that also found that physically fit young people are less likely to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, or other risk factors for chronic diseases.

"Between the 1950s and the 1980s, regular surveys of youth physical fitness were conducted in the United States. An increasing proportion of children have become obese since the 1980s, which may be explained by a decrease in physical activity," Pate said. "If so, it is likely that average physical fitness also has declined among youth in the same time period, since the last national survey."

Pate and colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cooper Institute assessed the physical fitness of 3,287 youth ages 12-19 who participated in the government-conducted National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2002. The participants were interviewed in their homes and then visited a mobile examination center, where they had a treadmill exercise test consisting of a two-minute warm-up, two three-minute periods of exercise, and a two-minute cool-down.

The study was funded by a grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine is a publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

11/06