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Educating the Student Body
erinary medicine, the health care system, and preclinical sciences. PubMed 
provides access to more than 12 million MEDLINE citations. MEDLINE 
contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 4,600 
biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries. 
The literature search strategy generated search terms based on the com-
mittee’s framework approach to its task (see Figure 1-4 in Chapter 1). The 
initial search strategy paired the terms “physical education” and “physical 
activity” with terms related to themes including academic achievement, 
brain development, classrooms, disparities, exercise, fitness, intra- and 
extramural sports, joint use, mental health, out-of-school time, policy, 
psychosocial health, recess, school financing, sedentary activity, somatic 
growth, transportation, and weight. More detailed searches also included 
terms such as “somatic growth and health,” “muscle,” “heart,” “bone,” 
“metabolic syndrome,” “lipids,” and “blood pressure.” Searches were typi-
cally limited to U.S. populations and to children and adolescents, with the 
exception of studies examining the long-term and adult health benefits of 
childhood activity. 
In addition, the committee invited presentations from experts on pro-
grammatic approaches to physical activity in the school environment (see 
Appendix D).
The committee developed recommendations, key messages, and action 
steps based on the evidence retrieved through the literature searches and 
expert presentations.

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