The potential of a year-round school calendar for maintaining children's weight status and fitness: Preliminary outcomes from a natural experiment

摘要

Purpose: To evaluate the potential of a year-round school calendar (180-day school year distributed across 12 months) as an intervention com-pared to a traditional school calendar (180-day school year distributed across 9 months) for mitigating children’s weight gain and fitness loss viaa natural experiment.Methods: Height, weight, and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) (i.e., Fitnessgram Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run) were measured inchildren (5?12 years old) in 3 schools (2 traditional, 1 year-round, n=990 students, age=8.6 § 2.4 years, 53.1% male, 68.9% African American) from1 school district. Structure (represented by the presence of a school day) was the independent variable. Changes in body mass index (BMI), age- andsex-specific BMI z-scores (zBMI), BMI percentile, percent of overweight or obese children, and CRF (Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular EnduranceRun laps completed) were assessed for summer 2017 (May?August 2017), school year 2017/2018 (August 2017?May 2018), and summer 2018(May?August 2018). Primary analyses examined the overall change in weight and CRF from summer 2017 until summer 2018 via multilevel mixedeffects regression, with group (traditional vs. year-round calendar), time, and a group-by-time interaction as the independent variables. Secondaryregression analyses estimated differences in change within and between groups during each time period, separately.Results: Year-round students gained less BMI (difference in Δ= ?0.44, 95% confidence interval (CI): ?0.67 to ?0.03) and less CRF (differencein Δ=?1.92, 95%CI: ?3.56 to ?0.28) than students attending a traditional school overall. Compared with traditional students, during both sum-mers, year-round students gained less BMI (summer 2017 difference in Δ= ?0.15, 95%CI: ?0.21 to ?0.08; summer 2018 difference inΔ=?0.16, 95%CI: ?0.24 to ?0.07) and zBMI (summer 2017 difference in Δ =?0.032, 95%CI: ?0.050 to ?0.010; summer 2018 difference inΔ=?0.033, 95%CI: ?0.056 to ?0.009), and increased CRF (summer 2017 difference in Δ= 0.40, 95%CI: 0.02?0.85; summer 2018 differencein Δ =0.23, 95%CI: ?0.25 to 0.74). However, the opposite was observed for the school year, with traditional students gaining less BMI andzBMI and increasing CRF compared with year-round students (difference in BMI Δ= 0.05, 95%CI: 0.03?0.07; difference in zBMI Δ=0.012,95%CI: 0.005?0.019; difference in Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run laps Δ=?0.43, 95%CI: ?0.58 to ?0.28).Conclusion: The year-round school calendar had a small beneficial impact on children’s weight status but not CRF. It is unclear if this benefit tochildren’s weight would be maintained because gains made in the summer were largely erased during the school year. Trajectories of weight andCRF gain/loss were consistent with the structured days hypothesis.