BOSTON, June 5 (UPI) -- A study of 17,000 U.S. adolescents finds that black and Hispanic girls are less physically active than white girls, depending on what school they attend.
African-American white and Hispanic girls attending the same school have no difference in physical activity, but among boys, African-Americans and Hispanics were more physically active than whites attending the same schools, according to Dr. Tracy Richmond, of the division of adolescent medicine at Children's Hospital Boston.
Richmond and colleagues analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a school-based study of 7th-to-12th graders and found on average, black and Hispanic adolescents had a higher body mass index than white adolescents and among boys, there were only minimal racial/ethnic differences in physical activity levels overall.
Students with lower household incomes reported less physical activity, however, after taking into account the average household income of the schools' student body, individual household income was no longer significantly associated with physical activity in either males or females, according to the study published in Pediatrics.
"This suggests that poorer and richer students attending the same school have similar levels of physical activity," says Richmond.
