Recommendations from the Stanford University Report: “Building Generation Play”:
Addressing the Crisis of Inactivity Among America’s Children

The Stanford School of Medicine “Building Generation Play”: Addressing the Crisis of Inactivity Among America’s Children report recommends the following tips to help children achieve 60 minutes of physical activity every day. The recommendations will impact everything from parents and schools to healthcare, mass media, industry, communities, and government:

1. Design community evaluation tools, such as a “Community Play Index” that incorporates measures of the availability of opportunities for physical activity. Communities should be encouraged to use the index to assess and improve opportunities for physical activity in the community, and to build model communities of play.

2.Encourage parents to support and facilitate physical activity both in and outside the school environment.

3.Place limits on sedentary leisure pursuits such as television viewing and other screen-time to no more than 2 hours per day.

4.Implement daily PE classes taught by qualified instructors.

5.Foster awareness of the benefits of physical activity and

encourage active lifestyles through community-based advertising campaigns.

6.Conduct routine healthcare monitoring of children’s weight status and health behaviors including physical activity participation.

7.Create products that promote physically active entertainment.
8.Encourage new development projects planned with designs for promoting physical activity (e.g., bike paths, sidewalks, mixed land use, no barricades between home and schools, pedestrian promenades).

9.Increase venues such as recreational facilities, community-based organizations, parks, and playgrounds that are accessible to all children and allow for safe play.