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b
Methodology
T
he committee was convened to develop recommendations regarding 
approaches for strengthening and improving programs and policies 
for physical activity and physical education in the school environment. In 
tackling the committee’s charge, a set of more than 1,000 articles and reports 
were identified from peer-reviewed published literature and from organiza-
tions relevant to physical education, physical activity, and health. The focus 
of the literature review was to retrieve review articles and seminal articles 
on the evidence available on the influences of physical activity and physical 
education on the short- and long-term physical, cognitive and brain, and 
psychosocial health and development of children and adolescents and poten-
tial physical activity and physical education policies and programs. 
Scopus and ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) were pri-
marily used to search the literature, supplemented by MEDLINE. Scopus is 
a multidisciplinary research tool indexing more than 15,000 peer-reviewed 
journals from 4,000 publishers. Subject areas covered by Scopus include 
chemistry; physics; mathematics; engineering; life and health sciences; social 
sciences; psychology; economics; biological, agricultural, and environmen-
tal sciences; and general sciences. ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of 
Education Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education. ERIC contains 
more than 1.4 million records for education-related journal articles and 
other education materials from scholarly organizations, professional asso-
ciations, research centers, policy organizations, university presses, the U.S. 
Department of Education and other federal agencies, and state and local 
agencies. MEDLINE is the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s biblio-
graphic database, covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, vet-

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Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School
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