T E X T
If all of the children who currently are
sedentary started exercising every day, societies
could save enormous amounts of money in the
coming decades and have healthier citizens as a
whole, according to a remarkable new study. In the
United States alone, we could expect to save more
than $120 billion every year in health care and
associated expenses. The study is the first to use
sophisticated computer simulations to arrive at a
literal and sobering societal price tag for allowing
our children to be sedentary.
Inactivity is, of course, widespread among
young people today. Recent research shows that in
the United States and Europe, physical activity
tends to peak at about age 7 for both boys and
girls and tail off continually throughout
adolescence. More than two-thirds of children in the
United States rarely exercise at all.
The immediate health consequences for
inactive children and their families are worrisome.
Childhood obesity, which is linked to lack of
exercise, is common, as is the incidence of Type 2
diabetes and other health problems related to being
overweight among children as young as 6.
But the long-term financial costs of
inactivity in the young, both for them and society
as a whole, have never been quantified. So for the
new study, which was published this week in Health
Affairs, researchers with the Global Obesity
Prevention Center at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore and other institutions decided to create a
bogglingly complex computer model of what the
future could look like if we do or do not get more of
our children moving.
The researchers began by gathering as
much public data as is currently available about the health, weight and physical activity patterns of all
31.7 million American children now aged 8 to 11,
using large-scale databases from the Census
Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and other groups.
The researchers fed this information into a
computerized modeling program that created an
electronic avatar for every American child today. In
line with reality, two-thirds of these children were
programmed to rarely exercise and many were
overweight or obese.
The scientists then had the simulated
children grow up. Using estimations about how
calorie intake and activity patterns affect body
weight, the program changed each virtual child’s
body day-by-day and year-by-year into adulthood.
Most became increasingly overweight.
As the simulated children became adults,
the scientists then modeled each one’s health,
based on obesity-associated risks for heart disease,
diabetes, stroke and cancer, and also the probable
financial price of dealing with those diseases
(adjusted for future inflation), both in terms of
direct expenses for hospitalizations, drugs and so
on, and lost productivity because of someone’s
being ill.
The results were staggering. According to
the computer model, the costs of today’s 8- to 11-
year-olds being inactive and consequently
overweight would be almost $3 trillion in medical
expenses and lost productivity every year once the
children reached adulthood and for decades until
their deaths.
But when the researchers tweaked
children’s activity levels within their model, the
numbers began to look quite different. If they
presumed that, in an imaginary America, half of all
children exercised vigorously for about 25 minutes
three times a week, such as during active recess or
sports or, more ambitiously, ran around and moved
for at least an hour every day, which is the amount
of youth exercise recommended by the C.D.C.,
their virtual lives were transformed.
Most obviously, the incidence of childhood
obesity fell by more than 4 percent, a change that
resonated throughout the simulated children’s lives
and society. There were about half a million fewer
cases of adult-onset heart disease, diabetes, cancer
and strokes in this simulation, and the society-wide
costs associated with these illnesses dropped by
about $32 billion every year if the children romped
about for 25 minutes three times per week and by
almost $37 billion if they moved for an hour every
day.
The impacts were even more substantial
when the researchers assumed that 100 percent of
the children who are now sedentary got regular
exercise. In this scenario, the annual total costs
during adulthood from obesity-associated medical
expenses and lost productivity plummeted by about
$62 billion when children were active three times a
week and by more than $120 billion every year
when all of the virtual children played and moved
for at least an hour each day.
From: https://www.nytimes.com May 3, 2017
According to the article, the researchers, taking
into account the current reality of children in the US,
fed the computer program with the information about
the lack of exercising and the calorie intaking patterns
and made the computer model go through the
growing process year by year, thus revealing that
these children
