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Impact of Weight Status on the Cardiopulmonary Fitness Outcome of a School‐Based Physical Activity Program
Author(s) -
Moon Rena C.,
Cunningham Solveig A.,
Gazmararian Julie
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of school health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.851
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1746-1561
pISSN - 0022-4391
DOI - 10.1111/josh.12936
Subject(s) - overweight , medicine , body mass index , obesity , physical therapy , cardiovascular fitness , psychological intervention , physical fitness , gerontology , psychology , nursing
BACKGROUND The effectiveness of school‐based physical activity interventions for improving cardiopulmonary fitness (CPF) of overweight and obese children is not well established. In this study, we evaluated whether overweight and obese children had similar changes in body mass index (BMI) and CPF as normal weight children after participating in a program for one academic year. METHODS Using purposive sampling at the school level, we selected 16 program and 7 control schools in a large metropolitan area in the Southeast during the 2015‐2016 academic year. In these schools, 3396 fourth‐graders participated with parental consent. Of these, 2332 (68.7%) participated in BMI measures and 1780 (52.4%) in Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run (PACER) measures for CPF at two time points. RESULTS Students of all weight statuses pre‐program did not show changes in BMI after program implementation. All students showed statistically significant improvements in the PACER test at follow‐up, regardless of their participation in the program. However, overweight and obese children showed less improvement in CPF level than their normal weight classmates, regardless of their participation in the program. CONCLUSION Special attention for improving engagements of overweight and obese children may be needed to achieve improvements in their CPF level similar to that of normal weight students.