It’s called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, words not ordinarily associated with youth sports. The mission of the CDC is to protect the nation from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. – like COVID-19. Yet, promoting the development of healthy children and communities is very much in the bailiwick of the federal agency, and within that realm the CDC has unique levers that impact the state of play for youth today.
An arm of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the CDC recognizes the role physical activity, including sports participation, can play in preventing a range of chronic diseases from obesity to cancer. So, it works with schools to shape program priorities, cities to facilitate transportation options to parks, and researchers to develop data that can guide public and private sectors decisions.
Janet Fulton is the Senior Advisor for Science within the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity, part of the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. In that capacity, she has served since 2017 as a technical advisor to Project Play 2024, an Aspen Institute roundtable of leading organizations convened to develop mutually reinforcing actions that can help grow sport participation and related metrics among youth.
She talked with Tom Farrey, executive director of the Institute’s Sports & Society Program, about how the CDC can drive progress. Below is an edited version of their conversation.
Tom: Help us better understand the CDC’s role in promoting sports and physical activity.
Janet: One of the things we do is develop the evidence base for creating guidelines. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, which came out in 2018, includes guidelines for youth, which is 60 minutes a day, every day, and at least three days a week doing muscle strengthening, bone strengthening, and vigorous activities such as running. We also work with schools and youth programs through physical education as well as encouraging before and after school activities. The CDC does a lot of different things, working in partnership. We use science to develop strategies that work to improve physical activity and then we implement those strategies in communities and monitor progress over time.
Tom: What is Healthy People 2030 and why is it relevant?
Janet: These are health objectives created by the federal government for the nation. They set the bar for where we want to be at the end of this decade in areas of health, on all things from blood pressure to cholesterol rates, cigarette smoking to injuries. There's a whole chapter dedicated to physical activity, and now that chapter includes, for the very first time, an objective around youth sports, which has not happened before. This is exciting. The objective is for 63.3% of students (ages 6 to 17) to participate on a sports team by 2030. Having that objective is a big deal, because as of 2018-2019, the most recent year of available data, only 56.1% of the population met that objective.
Tom: The world of youth and school sports has been disrupted significantly by the pandemic. What do you see as the challenges — and perhaps some silver linings — that have emerged?
Janet: I think you know the challenges. The pandemic has really highlighted the inequities and disparities in the country (including access to sport activity based on family household income, according to Aspen Institute and Utah State University research from May 2021). I don’t want to understate how devastating the impact has been. The silver lining though is that it’s forced the country to shine a light on those disparities.
We’re also seeing greater recognition of the mental health benefits of playing sports. The pandemic has shown how there are different ways to enjoy sports, such as conditioning or small-sided games. The pandemic has certainly made us rethink the ways we can be physically active but still stay safe.
It’s also caused us to take a step back and think about how we can reimagine youth sports. How do we rethink the institution from a community level? You've talked about resilience and sustainability around youth sports, and you know, maybe it's time to do that, reorient our perspective a little bit and think more deeply about how to better engage families and communities through youth sports so they don’t have to return to the same model.
Tom: Now that the federal government’s youth sports goal is in place, what does it mean? Are agencies expected to organize grantmaking in a certain manner or develop symbiotic policies?
Janet: The federal government works with communities, states, and national entities to try and improve physical activity. We have lots of programs. One example is the National Youth Sports Strategy, which lays out a plan on how to improve youth sports. Grants have been provided to communities to try to pull that little lever to get kids to be more active. And I think that's where partnerships are so essential. We also work through state health departments to get communities to increase physical activity levels – and sports are a part of that. We also have an initiative at CDC called Active People, Healthy Nation that brings together federal, state and private sector partners to coalesce around physical activity as an important lever.
Tom: How can members of the Project Play network be helpful?
Janet: There are a lot of ways. Project Play 2024, and Project Play generally, has assembled an amazing group of organizations and individuals. Many of those entities have huge platforms. They have great brands and I think that leveraging those brands like you've done in the past, through collective action and communications campaigns like Don't Retire, Kid, (can help). They can encourage a kind of new normal. I also think there are opportunities identified in the National Youth Sports Strategy on how (entities from across sectors) can partner with the federal government. I also suggest PP2024 members and their partners use the Healthy People 2030 data and additional insights made available through the Child & Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, a tool that offers breakdowns by state and by two dozen subgroups, including age, race/ethnicity, gender, household income, family structure, even current insurance status. I’d also encourage organizations to support Active People, Healthy Nation, possibly by joining as Community Champions.
Learn more about Project Play and Project Play 2024.