Impact of New York City's 4-year multi-component natural experiment to improve elementary school physical education on student cardiorespiratory fitness.

ABSTRACT:

Background

School physical education is an important population-level health intervention for improving youth fitness. This study estimated the impact of New York City's PE Works program - which included providing PE teachers, training for classroom teachers, and administrative/ teacher support for PE - on student cardiorespiratory fitness as measured by the FitnessGram's 15-meter PACER test for aerobic capacity.

Methods

This longitudinal study (2014/15-2018/19) includes 581 elementary schools (n = 315,999 4th /5th -grade students; 84% non-white; 74% who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a proxy for socioeconomic status). We apply the parametric g-formula to address schools' time-varying exposure to intervention components and time-varying confounding.

Results

SUBMITTER: Thompson HR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11562091 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature