Health Risks for Teenage Athletes - Women's Sports Foundation study - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), August, 2001

A Women's Sports Foundation nationwide study offers a comprehensive evaluation of the connections--either positive or negative-between sports and adolescent health risks. It explores the ways in which they are related for both girls and boys, while analyzing some of the multifaceted connections of the sports experience to the health, safety, and fitness of American teenagers.

According to Kathleen Miller, a professor at George Washington University, Washington, D.C., the study's director, "Sport wears two faces. It can be a mechanism for positive public health outcomes, but also can promote certain health risks and negative behaviors in young people. We need to have open dialogue about the societal messages that are being communicated to our children about sports and risky health behaviors." Some of the findings in the study include:

* Athletes (male and female) were less likely to use illicit drugs, smoke cigarettes, and be suicidal.

* Athletes (male and female) were no more likely than nonathletes to drink alcohol or binge drink.

* Female athletes were more likely to have a positive body image and wear seatbelts than nonathletes.

* Male athletes were no more likely to use anabolic steroids than male nonathletes.

The message is clear, however, that there are two sides to teen athletics. Highly involved male and female athletes (those who participate in three or more sports) demonstrated negative behavior patterns. Some of these findings include:

* Highly involved female athletes were nearly twice as likely as nonathletes to use steroids, three times more likely to use chewing tobacco, and more likely to use pathogenic dieting methods.

* Highly involved athletes (male and female) were somewhat more likely to binge drink than nonathletes.

* Female athletes and highly involved athletes (male and female) were more likely to drink and drive than nonathletes.

In an effort to guide athletes, coaches, parents, and communities, the study offers policy recommendations on how to promote adolescent health through sports and reduce health risks. These include creating Federal, state, and local policy and action agendas to support athletics; using sports as a way to promote long-term health; promoting gender equality in athletics; fostering working relationships among coaches, parents, and health professionals; acknowledging the existence of health risks; increasing efforts to detect and prevent health risk behaviors; challenging the use of sports imagery to sell harmful substances to teens; and providing positive and healthy adult role models.