Prevalence of selected cardiovascular and cancer risk factors in a pediatric population: The “Know Your Body” project, New York

Abstract

The “Know Your Body” health education program attempts to reduce children's risk for future disease through a multidimensional approach that combines health screening, a Health Passport that provides feedback to students on their results, teacher training, and curriculum materials on behavior-oriented learning activities, and special activities for high-risk students. As part of an international collaborative project with 14 other nations, more than 3,600 New York City area children age 12 to 15 years underwent health screening evaluations consisting of height, weight, triceps skinfold thickness, blood pressure, plasma total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol, pulse rate recovery index after exercise, and cigarette smoking history. This report provides mean, standard deviations, 90th and 95th percentiles for these measurements by age and sex of the child. These values could be useful in evaluating risk factor levels in childhood.