Standards and Policies for Promoting Physical Activity in Afterschool Programs

Background/Purpose: National guidelines exist that define quality afterschool programs (ASP). Yet, no widely adopted national standards or policies exist for ASP providers for the promotion of physical activity (PA). To address this gap, state-level ASP organizations have developed or adopted standards/policies related to PA. However, the extent to which standards/policies are uniform and disseminated is unclear. The purpose of this study was to systematically review state level quality ASP documentation to identify standards/policies for promoting PA within the ASP setting. It is anticipated the compilation of these standards/policies will provide a framework for developing national guidelines.

Methods: A review of state-level ASP organizations' standards/policies was conducted to identify documentation that included language explicitly defining the promotion of physical activity within the ASP. State-level ASP organizations were identified from registries available from national ASP organizations (Afterschool Alliance, Statewide Afterschool Network) or, where appropriate, the states' department of education. Additional keyword web-based searches were also conducted to identify state-level ASP organizations. Documentation was retrieved from online sources and reviewed using a standardized content analysis protocol.

Analysis/Results: Documentation describing quality ASP was retrieved from 46 designated state-level organizations. Three states had no afterschool-type state level organization readily identifiable. Of the 46 states, 12 incorporated language related to the promotion of PA. This included the provision of adequate outdoor space for attendees to be active, provision of frequent PA opportunities, and promoting physical development. However, these failed to explicitly delineate the amount of time to allocate for PA, what constituted adequate space, or specify the PA intensity level. Four states (IN, MA, MI, NC) had policies that specified the allocation of time for attendees to be physically active during ASP attendance. These were 30min of PA for every 3hrs of programming and 20% of daily program time devoted to moderate-to-vigorous PA. Three states (KS, MO, NC) outlined standards regarding core competencies for ASP providers to promote PA.

Conclusions: The largely absent language concerning the promotion of PA within the ASP setting indicates greater attention is required to establishing standards/policies that can be readily adopted at the state- and national-level. Nevertheless, several states did have documents that contained information that can serve as baseline standards/policies to be empirically tested. The testing of these standards/policies will assist in the development of national guidelines and the recognition of the need to promote PA within the ASP setting.