ReviewAmerican journal of lifestyle medicine
Summer Weight Gain and Fitness Loss: Causes and Potential Solutions.
Review in American journal of lifestyle medicine. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Health effects of children's summer holiday programs: a systematic review and meta-analysis.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2024Pooled it
- Impact of free summer day camp on physical activity behaviors and screentime of elementary-age children from low-income households: a randomized clinical trial.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2025Trial
- "I feel better as a parent" - summer programs help support children's health behaviors and parent wellbeing.Research square · 2026Article
- School's Out, Rules Out: Changes in parent rules and routines over summer from the What's UP (Undermining Prevention) with Summer Observational Cohort Study.Research square · 2026Article
- Combining Ecological Momentary Assessment and Social Network Analysis to Study Youth Physical Activity and Environmental Influences: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Feasibility Study.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- Article
- Preliminary Effectiveness of a One-Week Summer Day Camp for Improving Children's Health Behaviors and Psychosocial Well-Being Outcomes.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Physical activity and sleep changes among children during the COVID-19 pandemic.NPJ digital medicine · 2024Article
- Children's Health, Wellbeing and Academic Outcomes over the Summer Holidays: A Scoping Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Leveraging seasonality and timing to optimize pediatric weight management interventions: Novel directions for future research.Obesity science & practice · 2023Article
- Children's activity and diet behaviours in the summer holidays versus school year.Pediatric obesity · 2023Article
- Seasonal variability in body mass index change among children enrolled in the Pediatric Obesity Weight Evaluation Registry: A step in the right direction.Pediatric obesity · 2023Article
- Youth physical activity and the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review.Preventive medicine reports · 2022Review
- Healthy Summer Learners: An explanatory mixed methods study and process evaluation.Evaluation and program planning · 2022Article
- Bidirectional relationships of physical activity and gross motor skills before and after summer break: Application of a cross-lagged panel model.Journal of sport and health science · 2022Article
- Attenuated efficacy of pediatric obesity treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic.Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) · 2022Article
- The Immediate and Lasting Effects of Resident Summer Camp on Movement Behaviors Among Children.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2022Article
- Changes in Physical Health-Related Indexes of Chinese College Students before and after COVID-19 Lockdown.BioMed research international · 2022Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on elementary schoolers' physical activity, sleep, screen time and diet: A quasi-experimental interrupted time series study.Pediatric obesity · 2022Article
- Differences in the proportion of children meeting behavior guidelines between summer and school by socioeconomic status and race.Obesity science & practice · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Over the past 3 decades, public health professionals have worked to stem the rising childhood obesity epidemic. Despite the field's best efforts, no progress has been made in reducing child obesity. One reason for this failure may be that obesity prevention and treatment efforts have predominately been delivered during the 9-month school year. However, recent evidence suggests that the summer, not the school year, is when unhealthy changes in body composition (ie, accelerated increases in percent body fat) and fitness losses occur. This unhealthy change in body composition and fitness loss during the summer could be explained by the "Structured Days Hypothesis," which posits that children engage in a greater number of unhealthy obesogenic behaviors on unstructured days when compared with structured days. Furthermore, the summer may be contributing to a widening "health gap" between children from low-income and middle- to upper-income families. During summer, fewer opportunities exist for children from low-income households to access healthy structured programs that do not require fees for participation. Moving forward, public health professionals should prioritize efforts to mitigate unhealthy changes in body composition and fitness loss during the summer by identifying ways to provide access to structured programming during this timeframe for children from low-income households.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.