School districts across the nation have made improvements when it comes to nutrition, physical education and tobacco policies on campus, according to the 2012 School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS).
“Schools play a critical role in the health and well-being of our youth,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. in a press release. “Good news for students and parents – more students have access to healthy food, better physical fitness activities through initiatives such as ‘Let’s Move,’ and campuses that are completely tobacco free.”
SHPPS is the largest and most comprehensive survey to assess school health policies, a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
The report focused on three areas including nutrition, physical activity and tobacco policies.
Key findings:
• Soft drink advertisements on campus decreased from 46.6 percent in 2006 to 33.5 percent in 2012.
• The percentage of school districts that banned junk food from vending machines jumped from 29.8 percent to 43.4 percent between 2006 and 2012.
• The percentage of school districts that made nutritional information available to families and students rose from 35.3 percent to 52.7 percent between 2000 and 2012.
• The percentage of school districts that required elementary schools to teach physical education increased from 82.6 percent in 2000 to 93.6 percent in 2012.
• The percentage of districts with policies that prohibited all tobacco use during any school-related activity increased from 46.7 percent in 2000 to 67.5 percent in 2012.
Researchers collected the data at the state and district levels only for this study.
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