By Staff Reports
(Hawaii)– From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
Ten- to-14-year-olds seem to be less likely to start to smoke if they are in a coached extracurricular sport. Dartmouth researchers saw this in a nationally representative survey of over 6,500 tweens.
Researcher Anna Adachi-Mejia:
“Children in our study who participated in team sports with a coach a few times per week or more were less likely to try smoking.”
Adachi-Mejia says coached team sports was the only extracurricular activity with this benefit.
She also says this shows value for coached team sports at a time in life when young people start to get hooked on smoking.
The study in the journal Academic Pediatrics was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
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HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.