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

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 ages8-11 years, we estimated that maintaining the current physical activity levels (only 31.9percent 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 $1.1trillion in direct medical costs and $1.7trillion in lost productivity over the course of their lifetimes. If 50percent of children would exercise, the number of obese and overweight youth would decrease by 4.18percent, averting $8.1billion in direct medical costs and $13.8billion in lost productivity. Increasing the proportion of children who exercised to 75percent would avert $16.6billion and $23.6billion, respectively.