Program Boosts Physical Activity Levels for Kids in the Bronx

Share On Social!

It’s never too early for students to learn the importance of being physically active throughout their day. That’s why researchers from the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, developed and tested a new program which would give kids an opportunity to participate in 10-minute fitness breaks up to three times during the school day.

The program, which is designed with students in kindergarten and first grade living in the Bronx in mind, is called CHAM JAM, which is short for Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Joining Academics and Movement.

“Childhood obesity is a national concern, but it is even more prevalent among minority communities in urban areas such as the Bronx where rates as high as 26% have been recorded among school children ages six to 11 years old,” said Dr. Reznik in an interview with Newswise. “We know that Physical Education (PE) is an important part of the school day but barriers such as lack of space and resources have contributed to a reduction in PE in schools nationwide.”

That’s why Reznik and her colleagues created CHAM JAM, a cost-effective program designed to complement classroom curricula and help make it easy for teachers to lead activity breaks up to three times throughout the school day. The program provides teachers with an audio CD and a series of age-appropriate aerobic based activities.

To test the program’s effectiveness researchers designed a study in which two schools incorporated CHAM JAM into their daily activities and two schools served as control groups.

Two schools were randomly assigned to receive the CHAM JAM intervention and two schools served as the control group. The number of steps taken daily by children in all schools were similar at baseline; however eight weeks later the schools that incorporated CHAM JAM during lessons saw a significant increase in steps taken. The data were derived from a concealed pedometer that all participating children wore for five consecutive school days at baseline and again post-intervention.

Read more about this here and read see the results of the full study here.