Let’s get going!

“The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) monitors health risk behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death, disability and social problems among youth and adults in the US” (YRBSS) There has been a lot of talk about this report of the last several weeks. There are statistics about violent behaviors, teen suicide and alcohol and drug use that should get our attention. Today we are going to focus on one risk factor that we can all do something about – right NOW!

In looking at the trends in the prevalence of physical activity and sedentary behaviors, a couple of things become very clear. I was struck by the questions about physical activity and use of computers. Here are a couple of the results:

58% of the youth indicated that they played on at least one sports team
51.8% attended physical education classes on 1 or more days in an average week

That seems pretty OK until you turn it around. If 58% did, that means that 42% didn’t. If 51.8% did – that’s only half. So the other half didn’t. And the main increase in the questions regarding the prevalence of physical activity and sedentary behaviors? The youth indicated 31.1% of youth used computers 3 or more hours per day – on something other than school work.

So no surprise, you say. Yeah, OK. So what will we do about it?

Let’s get really radical here and think about how we can get this generation of youth moving. I think we can all use Dr. Oz’s Healthy Family Challenge. Take a look and give it a try. It’s easy, peasy! Click on the action plan and take the first steps!