Physical activity has been shown to reduce health care costs, prevent chronic disease, enhance productivity and improve quality of life. Numerous studies reinforce the common-sense principle of maintaining health through physical activity and exercise and with its ability to treat and prevent obesity, diabetes, heart and bone disease and other chronic conditions, exercise is powerful medicine, indeed. For these reasons in US 50 universities, scientific and professional organizations have wrote to Barack Obama to emphasize in his State of the Union Address the relevance of the promotion of the physical activity. The main points of the letter are:
- Public education programs to ensure that all Americans understand the benefits of healthy lifestyles and how to take advantage of the range of options open to them;
- Professional education so that health professionals consider physical activity a vital sign like blood pressure and cholesterol levels, to be monitored and tracked regularly;
- Electronic Medical Records that include fields for physical activity. As health provider systems convert to EMRs, they can easily begin to track exercise as a vital sign;
- Medical school curricula that give all physicians an adequate grounding in how to counsel patients on healthy lifestyles, and
- Increased opportunities for underserved populations to enjoy exercise and physical activity, by addressing disparities in the built environment, access to equipment and other barriers.
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