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NCHPAD - Building Healthy Inclusive Communities

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Introduction


Many individuals, including those with a disability, can benefit from participating in regular physical activity. Only a small segment of our nation's population, however, has been engaging in physical activity regularly.

"Improve health, fitness, and quality of life through daily physical activity" is one of the goals of Healthy People 2010 (HP2010), a nationwide health promotion and disease prevention plan through year 2010. Despite the nationwide efforts to promote physical activity and exercise, trend data indicate that there has been little change in the level of physical activity participation among Americans with a disability.

One of the specific objectives in the HP2010 physical activity area is to reduce the proportion of adults who engage in no leisure-time physical activity to 20% by year 2010. Shown in Graph 1 are annual percentages of adults with a disability who engage in no leisure-time physical activity. Each of the five bars in the graph represents the percentage of adults with a disability who never or were unable to engage in physical activity for at least 10 minutes at a time from 1998 to 2002. The graph visually describes that the proportion of adults with a disability who do not engage in leisure-time physical activity has changed little during this five year period.

 

Proportion of Adults with a Disability who Engage in No Leisure-time Physical Activity

Graph showing the Proportion of Adults with a Disability who Engage in No Leisure-time Physical Activity from the 1998-2002 National Health Interview Survey.
Graph showing the Proportion of Adults with a Disability who Engage in No Leisure-time Physical Activity

 

Two other physical activity objectives in the HP2010 serve to increase the proportion of adults who engage in vigorous and moderate physical activity regularly to 50% each by year 2010. Graph 2 represents the proportion of adults with a disability who engage in vigorous and moderate physical activities regularly each year from 1998 to 2002. In the graph, there are two bars representing each year. The left bar shown in light green represents the proportion of the adults who engage in vigorous physical activity regularly; the right bar shown in purple represents that of those who engage in moderate physical activity regularly. A person was classified as engaging in vigorous physical activity if he or she did physical activity that causes a large increase in breathing or heart rate for at least 3 or more times per week and 20 or more minutes for each time. The regular moderate physical activity was defined as an engagement in physical activity that causes light sweating or a slight increase in the breathing more than five times per week at least 10 minutes at a time. A red horizontal line across years represents the HP2010 target percentage, 30%. The graph shows that, for both types of physical activities, the increase across years was small and that a significant gap needs to be filled to achieve nation's goal by 2010.

 Proportion of Adults with a Disability who Engage in Regular Vigorous/Moderate Physical Activity

 Graph showing the Proportion of Adults with a Disability who Engage in Regular Vigorous/Moderate Physical Activity



Note:

  • Data Source: National Health Interview Survey.
  • Prevalence estimates across years are adjusted to the 2000 U.S. population.
  • Graphs are created based on the tabulation using DATA2010 interactive database system at http://wonder.cdc.gov/data2010/DEFINE.HTM.

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