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This article from the CDC is on school employees and how they can create a wellness program for employees to follow. The article begins by explaining why it is so important for staff in a school to stay healthy and practice wellness. The article then provides different ideas on how a wellness program can be implemented. There is even a scorecard that the site provides for employees to fill out, to make it like a competition. This information pertains to teaching because students see their teacher as a role model, so if the teacher is modeling healthy behaviors that sets a good example to the students. In the classroom, teachers can tell the class about some sort of physical/wellness that they did over the weekend (yoga, completing a race, playing a rec league sporting game).

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Fostering the physical and mental health of school employees also helps to support students' health and academic success. Every school employee, no matter the role they play, contributes to a school's mission. School staff can give their best when they feel their best. School employee wellness programs can help.

Schools can provide an employee wellness program for staff that includes healthy eating and physical activity services. When staff model these healthy behaviors, they can reinforce them with students.

Additionally, supporting school employee wellness programs can

* Improve staff retention and productivity.
* Decrease employee absenteeism.
* Decrease employee health care costs.

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centers for disease control and prevention

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Fostering the physical and mental health of school employees also helps to support students' health and academic success. Every school employee, no matter the role they play, contributes to a school's mission. School staff can give their best when they feel their best. School employee wellness programs can help.

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1. An article from the CDC addresses how school-based programs can be used to increase physical activity. The article begins by suggesting different ways that physical activity can be implemented throughout the school day. This can be as simple as implementing a 5 minute movement break into your lesson. Another benefit to school based programs is that almost all of them are free, which eliminates families running into financial problems. This topic can be addressed in the classroom by incorporating movement breaks throughout your lesson, teachers can even include movement into their lesson. Something that teachers can do to use school based programs to increase physical activity is that they can encourage students to join these programs. They can also post reminders to their classroom dojo or give students a flier about a certain activity and they can take this home to their parents.

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Interventions Changing the Context

What are school-based programs to increase physical activity?

School-based programs to increase physical activity can include programs to enhance physical education (PE) [1,2], provide daily recess,[3], incorporate physical activity into regular classroom lessons[4] and offer before and after school programs.[5] Physical education may be expanded by increasing the length of PE classes and increasing the number and types of fitness activities during PE classes.[1,2] Recess can help students get more physical activity to help them achieve the recommended 60 minutes of activity every day.Physical activity also may be incorporated into classrooms through physically active academic lessons or activity breaks.[6] Coordination between school day and before/after school program staff and administrators can help provide students with consistent messaging and opportunities related to physical activity while they are on school grounds. Programs may be combined with other school- and community-based interventions such as health education about physical activity, activities that foster family involvement, and community partnerships to increase opportunities for physical activity.[1,7]

Changes to the school day to increase opportunities for physical activity can be adopted and implemented at the state-level or at the local school district level.[1,2,8] An example of a state moving towards this goal is Mississippi, where staff and administrators made improvements to school health environments across the state, including adding walking trails to school campuses, integrating five-minute movement breaks into the classroom, implementing fitness assessments, and adding an additional 15 minutes of physical activity at the beginning of each school day.

The purpose of these school-based programs is to increase students' physical activity levels, and thereby help improve their fitness levels, help them maintain a healthy weight, and potentially improve their health outcomes over time.[1,2,4]

What's the public health issue?

Physical activity is an important contributor to overall health, and engaging in regular physical activity can decrease the risk for numerous adverse health outcomes, including hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.[9,10] Physical activity also is an important factor in achieving a healthy weight and maintaining it over time.[9] In 2008 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended that young people aged 6-17 years participate in at least 60 minutes of physical activity daily.[9] In its 2012 report, HHS recommended that programs in school settings should be included as a key component of strategies to increase physical activity and address childhood obesity.[11] However, in 2017, only 26 percent of high school students surveyed had participated in at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day during the week before the survey, and only 30 percent attended physical education class daily while in school.[12]

What is the evidence of health impact and cost effectiveness?

Multiple systematic reviews of school-based programs to increase physical activity have found that these interventions are associated with increased physical activity among students. [1,13-15] Reviews also found evidence that these interventions are associated with positive effects on BMI [13] and obesity prevention.[16]

A 2017 benefit-cost analysis by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) on school-based programs to increase physical activity found that they were associated with a positive benefit to cost ratio.[17] The WSIPP analysis estimated that elementary or middle school programs that added additional physical activity to the school day for students could result in a benefits to cost ratio of approximately $33.28 over a lifetime (in 2016 dollars, the base year for this analysis).[18] These benefits were calculated from decreased health care costs due to reductions in obesity and increased labor market earnings due to the positive impact of physical activity on academic achievement.

1. The Guide to Community Preventive Services. Behavioral and social approaches to increase physical activity: Enhanced school-based physical education. The Community Guide: What Works to Promote Health 2013; Available at: http://www.thecommunityguide.org/pa/behavioral-social/schoolbased-pe.html. Accessed September 6, 2018.

2. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. County health rankings & roadmaps: School-based physical education. 2014; Available at: http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/policies/school-based-physical-education. Accessed September 6, 2018.

3. Institute of Medicine. Educating the student body: Taking physical activity and physical education to school. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press;2013. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17226/18314.

4. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. County health rankings & roadmaps: Physically active classrooms. 2015; Available at: http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/policies/physically-active-classrooms. Accessed September 6, 2018.

5. McCombs J, Whitaker A, PY Yoo. The value of out-of-school time programs. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation;2017. Available at: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE267.html.

6. Donnelly JE, Lambourne K. Classroom-based physical activity, cognition, and academic achievement. Preventive medicine. 2011;52:S36-S42.

7. Centers for Disease Control Prevention. School health guidelines to promote healthy eating and physical activity. MMWR Recommendations and reports: Morbidity and mortality weekly report Recommendations and reports/Centers for Disease Control. 2011;60(RR-5):1.

8. Slater SJ, Nicholson L, Chriqui J, Turner L, Chaloupka F. The impact of state laws and district policies on physical education and recess practices in a nationally representative sample of us public elementary schools. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2012;166(4):311-316.

9. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Physical activity guidelines for americans. In: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ed2008.

10. Centers for Disease Control Prevention. Barriers to children walking to or from school-united states, 2004. MMWR: Morbidity and mortality weekly report. 2005;54(38):949-952.

11. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Midcourse Report Subcommittee of the President's Council on Fitness SN. Physical activity guidelines for americans midcourse report: Strategies to increase physical activity among youth. In: Services USDoHaH, ed. Washington D.C.2012.

12. Kann L, McManus T, Harris W, et al. Youth risk behavior surveillance - united states, 2017. MMWR Surveillance Summaries. 2018;67(No. SS-8):1-114.

13. Demetriou Y, Höner O. Physical activity interventions in the school setting: A systematic review. Psychology of sport and exercise. 2012;13(2):186-196.

14. Dobbins M, Husson H, DeCorby K, LaRocca RL. School-based physical activity programs for promoting physical activity and fitness in children and adolescents aged 6 to 18. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2013(2):CD007651.

15. Norris E, Shelton N, Dunsmuir S, Duke-Williams O, Stamatakis E. Physically active lessons as physical activity and educational interventions: A systematic review of methods and results. Preventive medicine. 2015;72:116-125.

16. Wang Y, Cai L, Wu Y, et al. What childhood obesity prevention programmes work? A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Obesity Reviews. 2015;16(7):547-565.

17. Washington State Institute for Public Policy. Benefit-cost technical documentation: Washington state institute for public policy benefit-cost model. Washington State Dec 2017. Available at: http://wsipp.wa.gov/TechnicalDocumentation/WsippBenefitCostTechnicalDocumentation.pdf.

18. Washington State Institute for Public Policy. Benefit-cost results Washington State Dec 2017. Available at: http://wsipp.wa.gov/BenefitCost/Program/574.

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School-based Programs to Increase Physical Activity | Health Impact in 5 Years | OPPE | CDC

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The Office of Policy, Performance, and Evaluation’s (OPPE) mission is to identify and advance opportunities to use policy, leverage health system transformation and engage other sectors to improve the public’s health.

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An article on NBC spoke about all of the amazing impacts that exercise has on the body. THe article started off by saying how working out does way more for your body than just losing weight. Regularly working out improves a person's overall health, lessens your risk of developing a chronic disease, and it can even lengthen their lifespan. It spoke about how you may not burn many calories during your workout, but in the bigger picture that should not matter. The reason that this should not matter is because like mentioned earlier there are so many benefits to working out. This pertains to teaching health to students because you can emphasize the importance of working out and staying active to students, and make them aware of all of the amazing benefits. What teachers can do to make students aware of all of the amazing benefits is they can create an infographic of all of the benefits to working out. This is so that the students are aware that there are more benefits to working out than just losing weight.

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Many Americans start off each new year with resolutions to lose weight, and gym memberships typically rise in January. But by March, the resolutions often have been dropped. The pounds didn't melt away as expected, and the gym shoes get kicked to the back of the closet.

While exercising may help people lose weight and maintain the weight loss, fitness experts say, people might overestimate how many calories they burn when they are working out, or they simply may not do enough to move the scale. That 30-minute cardio workout that left you sweaty and breathless may have felt like a grueling marathon, but it may have burned only 200 to 300 calories.

"That can be completely undone by consuming one donut in like, what, 60 seconds," said Glenn Gaesser, a professor of exercise physiology at the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University in Phoenix. "So we can undo with eating in a matter of minutes what it took us to burn that many calories over the course of many, many minutes, sometimes hours."

Regular exercise offers many benefits beyond burning calories - so there are plenty of reasons to keep moving in the new year. "Research shows that exercise affects pretty much every cell in the body, not just our heart, not just our muscles, but it also affects all the other organs, as well," Gaesser said. "Exercise is something that is vital for good health."

We have found that exercise basically improves health outcomes largely independent of weight loss.
Glenn Gaesser, Arizona State University, Phoenix
Among the benefits listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are sharper thinking, less depression and anxiety, better sleep, help with weight management, stronger bones and muscles, and reduced risks of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancers of the breast, the colon and other organs.

To obtain "substantial health benefits," federal health guidelines advise adults to do at least 150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes a week of vigorous physical activity, or an equivalent combination.

Nina McCollum, 52, of Cleveland, said she began gaining weight after she had a baby at age 40. The weight gain accelerated more in the last few years, said McCollum, who mainly blamed menopause.

McCollum, who has been physically active throughout her life, didn't find that exercise helped keep the extra pounds off. She now considers herself about 40 pounds overweight, but she's as much of an exercise enthusiast as ever. She works out at home, doing calisthenics and weight training and running stairs. She also walks her dog, and on the weekends she goes for outdoor hikes.

"I don't care anymore that I'm not like a stick figure," she said. Instead, she is focused on staying fit, strong and flexible as she ages, keeping healthy and trying to ward off heart disease, which runs in her family.

Gaesser said research shows that people who are overweight but exercise regularly, like McCollum, still reap many health benefits. "We have found that exercise basically improves health outcomes largely independent of weight loss," he said.

Physical activity works on multiple mechanisms within the body, and that's how it could potentially help prevent chronic conditions and therefore also prevent early deaths.
Amanda Paluch, University of Massachusetts Amherst
He co-wrote an article published in iScience in October that reviewed multiple studies and compared weight loss to exercise for promoting longevity and improving people's overall health.

While most of the data were based on observational studies and can't be used to establish cause and effect, Gaesser said, the research suggests that intentional weight loss is associated with a reduction in mortality risk of 10 percent to 15 percent. By comparison, studies suggest that increasing physical activity or improving fitness is associated with a reduction in mortality risk in the range of 15 percent to 60 percent.

"The major take-home message is that just being physically active and trying to improve your fitness seems to provide better prospects for longevity than just trying to lose weight," he said.

Another study published last year also found that exercise promotes longevity - even walking significantly fewer than the often recommended 10,000 steps. Middle-age people who walked at least 7,000 steps a day on average were about 50 percent to 70 percent less likely to die of cancer, heart disease or other causes over the next decade than those who walked less, according to results in JAMA Open Network.

"Physical activity works on multiple mechanisms within the body, and that's how it could potentially help prevent chronic conditions and therefore also prevent early deaths," said the study's author, Amanda Paluch, an assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Dr. Robert Sallis has long viewed exercise as a critical part of a healthy lifestyle. As president of the American College of Sports Medicine from 2007 to 2008, he inspired the " Exercise is Medicine " campaign, which encourages physicians to talk to patients about their physical activity, even to "prescribe" it.

Sedentary people who get moving can start feeling better right away, said Sallis, a clinical professor of family medicine at the University of California, Riverside, School of Medicine and the director of the sports medicine fellowship at Kaiser Permanente in Fontana.

"The first thing is mental health. That is almost the first thing people notice - I feel better, I have more energy, I sleep better," he said. "But then you could just go down the list of chronic diseases. I couldn't tell you a disease that isn't helped by it, from diabetes to heart disease to blood pressure to cholesterol to cancer, on and on."

Sallis encourages patients who don't exercise to start small and try to work up to the federal guidelines.

"The curve is very steep in terms of the benefits," he said. "Doing just a little bit gives tremendous benefits. So I try to focus on those smaller pieces instead of feeling like you have to join a gym and you have to do all this. Just go out and walk."

He also encourages patients to keep going even if they aren't losing weight. Too often, there is "this singular focus on their weight and thinking that, you know, if I don't lose weight, the exercise was not helpful to me, and a lot of them use that as a reason to stop," he said. "But the weight has so little to do with the benefits. If you can get patients who are overweight to be active, they get the same health benefits."

And being thin doesn't mean you don't need to exercise.

"In fact, if you're at a normal weight and you aren't physically active, you're putting yourself at risk for a lot of conditions," Sallis said.

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New science on exercise shows how it affects nearly every cell in the body

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Many Americans start off each new year with resolutions to lose weight, and gym memberships typically rise in January. But by March, the resolutions often have been dropped. The pounds didn't melt away as expected, and the gym shoes get kicked to the back of the closet.

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An article from Wellness Foundations talks about how the numbers of students who are inactive are out of control. The article began with an alarming statistic, looking at the U.S 81% of 11-17 year olds are inactive. This is super alarming because people who are inactive at a young age are more likely to continue to be inactive as they carry on with their lives. Falling into this trap can lead to: chronic disease and poor mental health. This can be pertained to teaching health because it is important that students have regular access to PE classes. And a bonus is if they have access to after school sports that are at no cost. It is important for teachers to know about this so that they too in addition to PE class can incorporate movement into their day.

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An article written by the American Medical Association wrote about how exercising will lengthen a person’s life expectancy. People who work out 150-300 minutes per week, people who performed two to four times above the recommended amount of physical activity had a 26% to 31% lower all-cause mortality and a 28% to 38% lower risk of cardiovascular disease. A substantially lower risk of mortality was observed among individuals who had adequate levels of both long-term leisure time moderate and vigorous physical activity. This pertains to teaching health to students by telling them about the amazing benefit that working out has for your body. It will deepen their understanding, in understanding that working out can do more for you than just a weight loss strategy. Teachers can help students to understand this concept by showing them a graph representing people who work out and their life span compared to people who do not.

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Consistent exercise is good for a person's health and well-being-that is well known. But how many minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity are needed to lower the risk of premature mortality? A study published in the journal Circulation defines that number and shares guidance on what level of physical activity is needed to maintain health and improve fitness.

While the 2018 physical activity guidelines recommend that adults engage in at least 150 to 300 minutes per week of moderate exercise, 75 to 150 minutes each week of vigorous movement or an equivalent combination of both intensities, it turns out that if adults do more than the recommended amount, it can help them live longer. Moderate physical activity is defined as walking, weightlifting and lower-intensity exercise. Meanwhile, vigorous exercise is categorized as running, bicycling and swimming.

From two large prospective U.S. cohorts, 116,221 adults self-reported leisure-time physical activity -defined as exercise that is not done at work-through a validated questionnaire. The questionnaire was repeated up to 15 times over the course of 30 years.

The study found that those who worked out two to four times beyond the minimum physical activity recommendations had a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease. Those who worked out two to four times above the moderate physical activity recommendations-about 300 to 599 minutes each week-saw the most benefit. Participants had a 26% to 31% lower all-cause mortality while 28% to 38% had lower cardiovascular mortality. On top of that, 25% to 27% experienced lower non-cardiovascular mortality.

Additionally, adults who worked out two to four times more than the vigorous physical activity recommendations-about 150 to 299 minutes per week-were found to have 21% to 23% lower all-cause mortality, according to the study. They were also reported to have 27% to 33% lower cardiovascular mortality and 19% lower non-cardiovascular mortality.

"A substantially lower risk of mortality was observed among individuals who had adequate levels of both long-term leisure time moderate and vigorous physical activity", the study says, noting that higher levels of vigorous physical activity were associated with lower mortality among those with insufficient levels of moderate physical activity each week.

But this was not the case for those who already had high levels of moderate physical activity-more than 300 minutes each week.

With that, the study notes that "any combination of medium to high levels" of vigorous (75 to 300 minutes per week) and moderate physical activity (150 to 600 minutes per week) "can provide nearly the maximum mortality reduction," which is about 35% to 42%.

Additionally, people who are insufficiently active-meaning less than 75 minutes per week of vigorous or less than 150 minutes of moderate physical activity-could get greater benefits in mortality reduction by adding in modest levels of either exercise. This means 75 to 150 minutes per week of vigorous exercise or 150 to 300 minutes each week of moderate physical activity. Doing so can reduce mortality by 22% to 31%.

There was an inverse association between long-term vigorous and moderate physical activity and mortality regardless of age. While younger people tend to choose vigorous activities more often, older adults choose moderate levels of exercise. Yet there was no evidence to show that one was better than the other in older people compared with younger folks.

Instead, in addition to long-term moderate physical activity, "long-term vigorous physical activity in generally healthy older adults can be an effective means of improving health," says the study.

"It is well documented that light to moderate regular physical activity prevents" cardiovascular disease, says the study. "But previous studies also showed evidence that long-term high-intensity endurance exercise (e.g., marathons, triathlons, long-distance bicycle races) may cause adverse events such as myocardial fibrosis, coronary artery calcification and atrial fibrillation as well as sudden cardiac death."

Yet this study suggests there is no harmful effect of high, long-term vigorous physical activity on cardiovascular health. More studies are needed to better understand the effects of high amounts of vigorous physical activity on cardiovascular outcomes and to identify the optimal amount and intensity of long-term exercise for health benefits.

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Massive study uncovers how much exercise is needed to live longer

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Consistent exercise is good for a person's health and well-being-that is well known. But how many minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity are needed to lower the risk of premature mortality? A study published in the journal Circulation defines that number and shares guidance on what level of physical activity is needed to maintain health and improve fitness.

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1. Wellness Program for Teachers

2. The Amazing Benefits!

3. School-Based Programs

4. Number of Inactive Students

5. Life Expectancy

6. Physical Activity With a Disability

7. Costs of Exercising

8. Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program

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For this article the CDC takes a look at people with disabilities and how they can get involved in physical activity. The article begins by emphasizing the point of how important physical activity is for everyone, no matter what their limitations may be. Although someone with a disability may not be able to complete the same activities as an able-bodied person, it is important to note that some activity is better than no activity. Some different activities that a person with a disability can do are: go on walks, participate in modified sports, hand crank biking, aquatic therapy, etc. This pertains to teaching health because if you are also the health and the gym teacher, if you have a student with a disability it is important that you teach them and their needs/abilities. It is essential for teachers to know about this because if they have a student with a disability that is interested in working out they can help to lead them in the correct direction.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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Everybody needs physical activity for good health. However, less than half of U.S adults with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs (mobility disability) report engaging in aerobic physical activity.¹ For those who are active, walking is the most common physical activity.¹ Yet, adults with disabilities report more environmental barriers for walking than those without disabilities.² Here are some ways that people with disabilities can stay active and healthy.
Physical activity plays an important role in maintaining health, well-being, and quality of life. According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd editionpdf icon external icon , physical activity can help control weight, improve mental health, and lower the risk for early death, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers. Physical activity can also improve mental health by reducing depression and anxiety. For people with disabilities, physical activity can help support daily living activities and independence.

Any amount of physical activity that gets your heart beating faster can improve your health. Some activity is better than none. For even greater health benefits, the Guidelines recommend that all adults, with or without disabilities, get at least 150 minutes (2.5 hours) of aerobic physical activity per week. Activities can be broken down into smaller amounts, such as about 25 minutes a day every day. Muscle-strengthening activities, such as adapted yoga or working with resistance bands, provide additional health benefits.

People with Disabilities

One in four U.S. adults is living with a disability, ³ defined as

Serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs;

Deafness or serious difficulty hearing;

Blindness or serious difficulty seeing;

Serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions;

Difficulty doing errands alone; or

Difficulty dressing or bathing.

Adults with disabilities are more likely to have obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, or cancer than adults without disabilities. ⁴ Physical activity can reduce the risk and help manage these chronic conditions.

Be Active to Stay Healthy

Many adults with disabilities and chronic health conditions can participate in regular physical activity; however, it's important to consult with a healthcare professional or physical activity specialist (for example, physical therapist or personal trainer) to understand how your disability or health condition affects your ability to safely do physical activity.

If you have a disability and want to make physical activity part of your daily routine, here are some options.

Being Active In Your Neighborhood

Engaging in physical activity outdoors can help improve your physical health, as well as your mental health and well-being. Most people can engage in an active lifestyle through walking-including people with disabilities who are able to walk or move with the use of assistive devices, such as wheelchairs or walkers. ⁵ In fact, walking is the most common form of physical activity reported among active adults with mobility disability. ¹

Unfortunately, adults with disabilities report fewer neighborhood environmental supports (such as sidewalks, public transit, and walkable shops) and more barriers (such as traffic, crime, and animals) for walking than those without disabilities. ² To improve this, resources were created to help promote the development of supportive environments for walking for individuals with disabilities.

Being Active In Your Home

Being active in your home can also be a good option. Here are some resources that can help you stay physically active while at home.

Decide how much physical activity is right for you and your fitness level, pick an activity you enjoy-for example, gardening, doing chores around the house, wheeling yourself around in your wheelchair, walking briskly, or dancing-and find ways to include your favorite physical activity into your everyday life.

What CDC and Our Partners Are Doing

CDC's Disability and Health Promotion Branch, within the Division of Human Development and Disability, supports and provides funding for two National Centers on Disability that focus on improving the quality of life for people living with disabilities, including their physical activity level.

The Branch also supports 19 state-based disability and health programs to

Promote equal access to opportunities for optimal health;

Prevent diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease; and

Increase the quality of life for people with disabilities.

Learn more about these State Disability and Health Programs.

In addition, to make it easier for people to be active, CDC works with communities and partners across the country as part of the Active People, Healthy NationSM initiative. The goal of this initiative is to help 27 million Americans become more physically active by 2027 to improve overall health and quality of life and to reduce healthcare costs.

CDC Disability Resources

Health is important for everyone. Having the tools and information needed to make healthy choices and knowing how to prevent illness are key to being well, with or without a disability. Visit these resources to learn more:

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Physical Activity for People with Disability | CDC

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Everybody needs physical activity for good health. However, less than half of U.S adults with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs (mobility disability) report engaging in aerobic physical activity.1 For those who are active, walking is the most common physical activity.1 Yet, adults with disabilities report more environmental barriers for walking than those without disabilities.2 Here are some ways that people with disabilities can stay active and healthy.

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An article written by the NY Times wrote about the costs of exercising. It started off by saying that yes, committing to exercising may seem pricey, when looking at the cost of a gym membership or work out classes. But working out will save you a bunch of money down the road in terms of health care. The article said, “​​People who start to exercise before or during middle age typically save from $824 to $1,874 annually on health care costs after retirement”. This is important to teach to students because you as a teacher can teach students about this concept, and then go onto create a flier that they can bring home to give to their parents. If parents learned about how amazing of an investment physical activity is I believe that they will be more willing to invest in it. Teachers can help students learn about this by teaching them about how by exercising you are making your body healthier and stronger, this lessens the amount of health issues that you may face if you don't exercise. So exercising lessens the number of doctor visits, which will save you money.

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People who start to exercise before or during middle age typically save from $824 to $1,874 annually on health care costs after retirement.

Credit... Erin Trieb for The New York Times

Becoming more physically active today might help us avoid thousands of dollars in health care costs later, according to a new study of exercise and Medicare claims. It finds that people who start to exercise before or during middle age typically save anywhere from $824 to $1,874 annually on health care costs after retirement, and the earlier they start their workouts, the greater those savings can be.

The study involved mostly well-educated white men and women and has other limitations, but the findings highlight how significantly exercise might benefit people's bank accounts, as well as their bodies.

By now, we know that we should move. Physical activity is associated with longer life spans and lower risks for a host of serious conditions, including Type 2 diabetes, depression, cancer, arthritis, obesity and dementia. But disheartening studies show that, despite these allures, nearly half of American adults rarely, if ever, exercise.

This pervasive physical torpor has personal and societal costs. A 2015 study estimated that inactivity drives at least $117 billion in annual health care spending in the United States, representing about 11 percent of the total.

Whether and to what extent getting up and moving might drop our share of that $117 billion, though, especially as we age, has been less clear. Past research suggests that physically active older people spend less on health care than other retired people, thanks in large part to needing fewer doctor visits and medications.

But those and similar studies focused on exercise habits at one point, typically when people were middle-aged or already elderly, and do not tell us what happens to health care costs if we change our habits over time. They also cannot pinpoint any optimal age, if there is one, to begin or ramp up a workout routine for the sake of our long-term finances and health.

So, for the new study, which was published in February in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, researchers at the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutions decided to look for links between people's activities at various ages and their health care costs, years later.

The researchers began by turning to the handy NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, a large-scale database of information about more than 500,000 older Americans, most of them white, who belong to the AARP. These study volunteers had agreed to fill out extensive forms about their lives and health.

Among these was a lengthy questionnaire asking how many hours each week participants had spent exercising or playing sports at multiple points throughout their lives. Many of the study participants also agreed to allow scientists to access their Medicare claims after they joined the insurance program, in order to track health care expenses.

Now, the National Cancer Institute scientists pulled records for 21,750 of the volunteers and began grouping them by workouts, noting changes over the decades. Did these men and women start exercising more or less often during their 20s, as young adults? Did they take up or abandon workouts in middle age? Or were they consistently active - or the reverse - throughout their lives?

Then, the researchers compared these groups and at least a year's worth of their eventual Medicare claims. And they found notable disparities.

Those men and women who reported exercising moderately throughout their adult lives, walking or otherwise being in motion for a few hours most weeks, saved an average of $1,350 annually - or about 16 percent - on health care expenses after reaching age 65 compared to sedentary people.

Interestingly, a different group, who said they had changed their routines, ramping up how often they exercised during their 20s, gained even greater monetary bang from their exercise, saving an average of $1,874 annually on health care after age 65. Even if some of these exercisers then let their increased routines slide during middle age, reducing how often they worked out in their 40s and 50s, they still spent about $860 less on health care later than people who almost never exercised.

These data intimate that being active when we are young might have especially potent and lingering impacts on our health care costs as we age.

But even waiting until middle age to become active proved beneficial in this study. People who increased how often they exercised after age 40 later spent, on average, $824 less annually on health care than their inactive peers.

In other words, "it's never too late to start" exercising, says Diarmuid Coughlan, a research associate at Newcastle University in England, who, as a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute, led the new study.

Of course, this study was observational and can show only that being active is associated with lower health care costs, not whether exercising causes expenses to change. It also relied on people remembering and honestly reporting their pasts, which can be tricky.

Still, "this is fairly solid data," given the size of the group and extent of the questionnaires, says Charles Matthews, a cancer epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute, who oversaw the new study. The findings "reaffirm the value of physical activity," he concluded, whatever our age.

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Lifelong Exercise Adds Up to Big Health Care Savings

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People who start to exercise before or during middle age typically save from $824 to $1,874 annually on health care costs after retirement.

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Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program

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Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program

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An article written by Shape America writes about the Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP). The goal of this program is to ensure that all students receive at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day. This program has many different ways that students can be activated throughout all parts of the school day. By students being active in school it increases their academic capabilities. This article pertains to teaching because it lists many different ways that teachers can ensure that their students receive at least 60 minutes of physical movement. The article goes on to talk about how movement can be incorporated into lessons. It is essential for teachers to know about this topic because  teachers who are committed to good health practices are positive role models for students and show increased support for student participation in physical activity.

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Schools play a vital role in ensuring children and adolescents get the nationally recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day. Through the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model, schools can provide many opportunities for students to be physically active. The WSCC model includes physical education and physical activity and the Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP) is a framework for planning and organizing activities this component. A CSPAP is a multi-component approach by which school districts and schools use all opportunities for students to be physically active, meet the nationally-recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day, and develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to be physically active for a lifetime. A CSPAP reflects strong coordination and synergy across all of the components: physical education as the foundation; physical activity before, during, and after school; staff involvement; and family and community engagement.

CDC, in collaboration with SHAPE America, developed a step-by-step guide for schools and school districts to develop, implement, and evaluate comprehensive school physical activity programs.

The goals of a CSPAP are:

To provide a variety of school-based physical activities to enable all students to participate in 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each day.

To provide coordination among the CSPAP components to maximize understanding, application, and practice of the knowledge and skills learned in physical education.

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What is CSPAP?- Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program

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A Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP) is a multi-component approach for students to be physically active and meet the nationally-recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day.