Overview of the International Consensus Conference on Physical Activity Guidelines for Adolescents

Abstract

Regular physical activity is recommended by the U.S. Public Health Service for children and adolescents as a part of an overall approach to lifetime health promotion (1). These recommendations for youth are primarily based on studies of the effects of physical activity on adults. To date, no scientific consensus has emerged about the amount and types of physical activity necessary for health maintenance during the childhood and adolescent years. The absence of a consensus constrains clinicians who may be interested in counseling their pediatric patients about physical activity. The International Consensus Conference on Physical Activity Guidelines for Adolescents was designed to develop empirically based guidelines that can be used by clinicians in their counseling, as well as by policy makers with responsibility for youth health promotion. The following set of papers describes the scientific background for the physical activity guidelines for adolescents, as well as the consensus statement itself. These physical activity guidelines for children and adolescents are based on a systematic review of the scientific pediatric literature. Because of the extremely limited nature of this research in younger children, the present set of papers focuses on physical activity guidelines for adolescents. To be consistent with the Guidelines for Adolescent Preventive Services (2), adolescence was defined as ages 1 1 through 21 years. The steering committee, with the assistance of an advisory group of eminent scientists, commissioned a set of nine review papers that served as the scientific background for empirically based physical activity guidelines for adolescents. Seven papers were designed to summarize the evidence related to the amount of physical activity needed to affect selected health variables in adolescents. Where possible, these papers examined the dose-response relation between physical activity and health variables and identified a level or amount of physical activity that reliably improved health outcomes in adolescents. It was determined