THE EFFECTIVENESS OF HEALTH-RELATED PHYSICAL FITNESS INTERVENTION PROGRAM TOWARD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN: AN EXPERIENCE OF HEALTH PROMOTING SCHOOL IN TAIWAN

Abstract

Background and Aims: For children the elementary school is the important stage to development healthy life-style and exercise habit, that promotes health-related physical fitness. The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of health-related physical fitness intervention program toward Elementary School children. Methods: The study subject was chosen from Yu Ying elementary school at Changhua County in Taiwan. The participants all are the grades six students a total 136, the health-related physical fitness intervention program was conduct to promotes healthy life-style and develop exercise habit. According to exercise interest of students the school children had set classified into a jogging group and dodge ball group. For the jogging group, the school teacher and exercise tutor lead student to do jogging exercise every morning for 30 minute, for the dodge ball group, the athletics teacher guided they do dodge ball exercise for 60 minutes after finish class everyday. For the other students they have no intervention. Results: The average BMI of dodge ball group was 19.28, not only lower than jogging group (19.39) and non participants (21.25) but the percentage of overweight of dodge ball group was also the lowers. For the non participants, they have highest percentage of overweight (34.99%). The further evaluation the number of school-children had passed “physical fitness medal”, they get prize ratio for the students who participant in health-related physical fitness intervention program was 18.38%, it’s higher than non participants 8.57%, According to the results, the intervention program had already show an effect. Conclusions: This study may be of impotence in applied health-related physical fitness intervention program to promote healthy life-style and develop exercise habit among elementary school children. As well as providing health educator with a better understanding of how to promote physical fitness intervention program in elementary school.