miércoles, 17 de mayo de 2017

Modeling The Economic And Health Impact Of Increasing Children’s Physical Activity In The United States

Modeling The Economic And Health Impact Of Increasing Children’s Physical Activity In The United States

AHRQ News Now

Increased Physical Activity for Kids Would Have Health and Economic Benefits

If half of U.S. children 8 to 11 years old got the recommended amount of physical activity, the proportion of children who are overweight or obese would decrease by 4 percent, according to new research funded partially by AHRQ. This would save $8 billion in annual medical costs associated with obesity-related conditions, researchers concluded. Having this same 50 percent of kids receive the recommended amount of exercise would also avert approximately $14 billion in annual lost productivity costs over their lifetimes, researchers concluded. The article in the May issue of Health Affairs estimated that only 32 percent of children currently get recommended amount of exercise, which consists of 25 minutes of high-calorie-burning physical activity three times a week. The study authors concluded that increasing children’s physical activity should be a higher national priority, in part because possible savings substantially outweigh the costs of interventions promoting increased physical activity. Access the abstract.
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Modeling The Economic And Health Impact Of Increasing Children’s Physical Activity In The United States

  1. Shawn T. Brown14
+Author Affiliations
  1. 1Bruce Y. Lee (brucelee@jhu.edu) is executive director of the Global Obesity Prevention Center and an associate professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore, Maryland.
  2. 2Atif Adam is a senior analyst at the Global Obesity Prevention Center.
  3. 3Eli Zenkov is a programmer analyst at the Global Obesity Prevention Center and a public health applications developer at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  4. 4Daniel Hertenstein is a senior programmer analyst at the Global Obesity Prevention Center.
  5. 5Marie C. Ferguson is a senior analyst at the Global Obesity Prevention Center and a research associate in the Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
  6. 6Peggy I. Wang is a senior research program coordinator at the Global Obesity Prevention Center.
  7. 7Michelle S. Wong is a senior analyst at the Global Obesity Prevention Center.
  8. 8Patrick Wedlock is a systems modeler at the Global Obesity Prevention Center.
  9. 9Sindiso Nyathi is a systems modeler at the Global Obesity Prevention Center.
  10. 10Joel Gittelsohn is director of community interventions at the Global Obesity Prevention Center and a professor in the Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
  11. 11Saeideh Falah-Fini is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at the California State Polytechnic University, in Pomona, and a collaborator at the Global Obesity Prevention Center.
  12. 12Sarah M. Bartsch is a senior analyst at the Global Obesity Prevention Center and a research associate in the Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
  13. 13Lawrence J. Cheskin is director of clinical research at the Global Obesity Prevention Center and associate professor in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
  14. 14Shawn T. Brown is director of computational research at the Global Obesity Prevention Center and director of public health applications at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon.
  1. *Corresponding author

Abstract

Increasing physical activity among children is a potentially important public health intervention. Quantifying the economic and health effects of the intervention would help decision makers understand its impact and priority. Using a computational simulation model that we developed to represent all US children ages 8–11 years, we estimated that maintaining the current physical activity levels (only 31.9 percent of children get twenty-five minutes of high-calorie-burning physical activity three times a week) would result each year in a net present value of $1.1 trillion in direct medical costs and $1.7 trillion in lost productivity over the course of their lifetimes. If 50 percent of children would exercise, the number of obese and overweight youth would decrease by 4.18 percent, averting $8.1 billion in direct medical costs and $13.8 billion in lost productivity. Increasing the proportion of children who exercised to 75 percent would avert $16.6 billion and $23.6 billion, respectively.

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