#67: How does physical education both help and harm?

with Dr. Hannah Thompson, Phd

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In this episode we discuss…

  • The state of physical education in American public schools

  • The first ever study to quantitatively measure the practice of school-based BMI measurement programs

  • The importance of instilling a love of movement in young children

  • Ways families can easily access more moving together activities

  • The social determinants of who gets good PE (and who does not)

  • Barriers to accessing good physical education

  • The difference between quantitative and qualitative research

  • The unintended consequences associated with BMI measurement programs

  • The challenges a holistic definition of “health” presents in quantitative research

  • Tactics to help promote embodied movement in your kids

All kids need to move, but not all kids get to move. While physical education programs level the socio-economic playing field and plant critical seeds for life-long love of movement, they are also responsible for the grim practice of school-based BMI measurement programs. Berkley Public Health epidemiologist, Dr. Hannah Thompson, joins to fill us in on the state of physical education today and what the research says about what helps… and what unintentionally harms.

Dr. Hannah Thompson is an epidemiologist at UC Berkley Public Health. Her research focus is on school- and community-based methods to increase physical activity levels, with the goals of improving youth health and decreasing health disparities. She is specifically interested in interventions to improve the quantity and quality of physical education in public schools. Through both qualitative and quantitative methods, she works to understand how schools and community-based youth development and physical activity organizations can work together to increase access to physical activity, with a particular focus on children in communities at highest risk for inactivity and poor health.

Dr. Thompson received her MPH in Public Health Nutrition at UC Berkeley and her PhD in Epidemiology and Translational Science at UCSF.

Resources mentioned or recommended:

Jordan Best