Krishna Guest Blogs: Dance for Health

This Guest Blog Post is from Krishna Mehta, one of Dr. T’s Health Psychology students:

Cardiovascular Disease is unfortunately the leading cause of death, especially among Hispanics and African Americans. So researcher Rosemary Flores decided to explore a new way to help young Hispanic and African American students improve attitudes towards physical activity and fitness in general. She designed a program known as Dance for Health, which provides students with an enjoyable school based aerobic exercise program. Her research demonstrated that students who participated in this study, as opposed to students who participated in regular physical education, had a significantly greater increase in aerobic fitness, had reduced body weight, and, as mentioned earlier, had a more positive attitude towards physical activity. However, the Dance for Health program was more effective on girls than boys. In the end though, the program was able to improve the health of the majority of students, and these findings offer strong support for implementing Dance for Health in more school districts. Read more about it here.