{"id":4039,"date":"2018-08-31T17:38:01","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T17:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=4039"},"modified":"2018-08-31T17:38:01","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T17:38:01","slug":"how-healthy-is-homeschool-body-composition-and-cardiovascular-disease-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=4039","title":{"rendered":"HOW HEALTHY IS HOMESCHOOL: Body Composition and Cardiovascular Disease Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:\u00a0<\/b>Laura S. Kibiri, Katy Mitchell, Wayne Brewer, and Alexis Ortiz, “How Healthy is Homeschool? An Analysis of Body Composition and Cardiovascular Disease Risk” in\u00a0Journal of School Health<\/em> 88, no. 2 (February 2018): 132-138. [abstract here<\/a>]<\/span><\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong>\u00a0Kabiri<\/a>, a professor in Houston Community College\u2019s Physical Therapy Assistant program.\u00a0\u00a0Mitchell, Brewer, and Ortiz\u00a0<\/a>are all on the faculty at the School of Physical Therapy at Texas Woman\u2019s University.\u00a0 These authors previously published the first study ever of homeschooled children\u2019s gross and fine motor skills, a review of which you can read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This time the authors come together again to evaluate the degree to which homeschooling impacts children’s body composition and cardiovascular disease risk.\u00a0 They begin with a literature review establishing that being “overfat” (which they distinguish from being “overweight” to allow for healthy individuals with above average muscle mass) is a risk factor for a number of negative adult outcomes, especially cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 They also provide statistics for the average rates of obesity and so forth among the United States’ children and adolescents.<\/p>\n

To compare homeschoolers with these averages, the authors conducted the Fitness Assessment in the Homeschooled (FAITH) study.\u00a0 The study used a sample of 143 children age 5-11 who had been homeschooled for at least one full year.\u00a0 Children attending cyberschools requiring physical education or with significant mental or physical disabilities were excluded.\u00a0 The researchers measured these students’ body mass index (BMI), percent body fat, and waist circumference, and parents filled out a demographic questionnaire.\u00a0 The sample was 85% white, with about 85% of families making over $60,000 a year, and over 80% of primary caregivers (all mothers) having earned a bachelor’s degree or higher.\u00a0 Thus the children sampled here are whiter, richer, and have parents who much better educated than the general population against which they are being compared.<\/p>\n

The findings were that homeschoolers in this sample had lower BMI and percent body fat overall than national averages, but that younger homeschooled children had above average waist circumference.\u00a0 By age 8 the waist circumference imbalance had reduced and homeschooled children looked normal.<\/p>\n

The authors conclude by recommending that homeschoolers taking advantage of publicly funded resources like online education or extracurricular activities be given health screenings and especially that such screenings include waist circumference measurement given their finding of increased risk there.<\/p>\n

Appraisal:<\/strong> This is not the first study of homeschoolers’ body composition.\u00a0 In 2010 Long\u00a0et al.<\/em> found<\/a>, in a study that compared demographically matched pairs of homeschoolers and public schoolers, that homeschoolers got a bit less exercise than do public schoolers but that food intake was about the same.\u00a0\u00a0In 2013 Cardel\u00a0et al<\/em>. found<\/a>, in another study that compared matched samples, that homeschooled children consumed on average about 120 fewer calories per day than similar children attending public schools.\u00a0 In both studies differences were not very pronounced.\u00a0 In 2015 Wachob and Alman found that homeschooled girls were a bit below national averages in physical fitness, whereas homeschooled boys were a bit above average, and their small sample also had a higher percentage of overweight or obese teaching parents, which proved causal for the tendency of some of the children in their sample to be overweight or obese as well.\u00a0 Their study, however, did not compare their sample with a control group from their same region, only with national averages.<\/p>\n

This new study, like Wachob and Alman, does not account for regional diversity, comparing a local sample to national averages.\u00a0 The authors here recognize the skewed nature of their sample in terms of parent education level and race, but this geographic variable is not mentioned.\u00a0 As rates of childhood obesity vary significantly by state<\/a>, this is an important consideration.\u00a0 Though it is not mentioned in the study, my guess is that since all four authors are Texas-based that the sample being reported on here was probably from Texas.\u00a0 Texas has childhood obesity rates that are significantly above average, so potentially a finding like that reported here that homeschooled children are have average BMI and percent body fat could actually suggest\u00a0that\u00a0\u00a0Texas homeschoolers are healthier than Texas children\u00a0who attend public schools.\u00a0 Or, given the high educational status and wealth of the families being sampled, it could actually be that homeschooled children who possess average BMI and percent body fat are in fact less healthy than a public schooled children with a similar demographic profile.\u00a0 All of that is a long-winded way of saying that this study doesn’t tell us very much since it only compares its skewed sample to national averages.\u00a0 Better would have been to follow the procedure of the Long and Cardel articles mentioned above and compare homeschoolers to a demographically similar sample of public schoolers from the same region.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record:\u00a0Laura S. Kibiri, Katy Mitchell, Wayne Brewer, and Alexis Ortiz, “How Healthy is Homeschool? An Analysis of Body Composition and Cardiovascular Disease Risk” in\u00a0Journal of School Health 88, no. 2 (February 2018): 132-138. [abstract here] Summary:\u00a0Kabiri, a professor in Houston … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[422],"tags":[1777,923,1779,1783,1775,1782,1780,1776],"class_list":["post-4039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-alexis-ortiz","tag-bmi","tag-houston-community-college","tag-journal-of-school-health","tag-katy-mitchell","tag-laura-s-kibiri","tag-texas-womans-university","tag-wayne-brewer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4040,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4039\/revisions\/4040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}