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Important Facts for Physical Activity Among Adolescents in Grades 9 to 12

Definition

The percentage of public high school students who participated in physical activities that increased their heart rate and made them breathe hard some of the time for a total of at least 60 minutes per day on five or more of the past seven days.

Numerator

The number of public high school students who exercised or participated in physical activity that increased their heart rate and made them breathe hard some of the time for a total of at least 60 minutes per day on five or more of the 7 days before the survey.

Denominator

The total number high school students surveyed

Data Interpretation Issues

In 2015 and 2017, the New Jersey Student Health Survey was unable to obtain the number of student responses needed to reach the 60% response rate required by the CDC to be able to weight the data to be representative of the New Jersey high school student population.

Why Is This Important?

Physical activity can help reduce overweight/obesity and the risk of several chronic diseases including asthma and diabetes. Research has shown that physical activity also increases life expectancy.

Healthy People Objective: Increase the proportion of adolescents who meet current Federal physical activity guidelines for aerobic physical activity and for muscle-strengthening activity: Aerobic physical activity

U.S. Target: 31.6 percent

Other Objectives

'''Healthy New Jersey 2020 Objective NF-3b''': Increase the proportion of high school students that meet current physical activity guidelines for moderate or vigorous physical activity to 54.8% among the total population, 58.9% among Whites, 48.5% among Blacks, 46.3% among Hispanics, and 48.2% among Asians.

How Are We Doing?

Physical activity is declining among high school students of all races/ethnicities except Hispanics. Healthy New Jersey 2020 targets were not met by any group.

How Do We Compare With the U.S.?

The proportion of New Jersey high school students who are physically active is consistently about the same as for the nation as a whole.
The information provided above is from the Department of Health's NJSHAD web site (https://nj.gov/health/shad). The information published on this website may be reproduced without permission. Please use the following citation: " Retrieved Fri, 29 March 2024 9:34:32 from Department of Health, New Jersey State Health Assessment Data Web site: https://nj.gov/health/shad ".

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