PHIT America Month Will Educate Americans and Provide Them with Activities and Events To
Fight the Growing ‘Inactivity Pandemic’
SILVER SPRING, MD – May 10, 2018 – The statistics are startling, but are being ignored. The U.S. is suffering from a toxic ‘Inactivity Pandemic’ as 82.4 million Americans are physically inactive. As some nationally renowned medical experts have stated: “Sitting has become the new smoking.”
The issue is real. Less than 25 percent of kids in America are physically active three times a week. More than 25 percent of all Americans are considered totally inactive. Unbelievably, 48 percent of high schools across the country have no physical education classes. Of military age Americans, 75 percent are unfit for military service. Childhood fitness levels in the United States rank 47th out of 50 countries.
PHIT America, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, intends to drive awareness about this dire situation, launching PHIT America Month in May. The mission is to promote and encourage Americans to learn and enjoy the opportunity to be physically active, exercise and play sports.
Starting today, people can log on to this website — PHITMonth.org — to find hundreds of local walking, running, swimming, and tennis events to get the country off the couch and engaged in physical activities. Some of the biggest health, fitness and sporting goods companies have joined the cause to get the message out, while raising money to expand PHIT America’s highly successful PHIT America GO! Grants program which, to date, has impacted nearly 200,000 school children through grants to their physical education classes.
“The impact of physical inactivity has wide-reaching implications in the United States,” said Jim Baugh, Founder, PHIT America. “It will impact long-term health care spending. It has a direct correlation with academic achievement. It impacts military readiness. These are hard facts and, along with our corporate sponsors and thousands of events in the month May, we intend to bring the issue to the forefront and start changing the vernacular.”
Joining forces with PHIT America in May are countless companies, sports organizations and individuals that will stage events to raise awareness of this growing pandemic and funds for PHIT America to support more youth school-based programs to get children more physically active, fit, and healthy. A full list of these special events, many of which are free, will be available at PHITMonth.org. In addition, PHIT America will publish its website tips and exercise routines which can be done at home.
“We are attracting support from organizations and companies which realize that physical inactivity will be reversed when we work together as a nation — in schools, in the workplace, in communities, and in neighborhoods,” said Baugh. “Our country’s well-being literally depends on it.”
To learn more or get involved, please contact Alliance@PHITAmerica.org.
Founded in January 2013, PHIT America is a non-profit campaign focused on overcoming the severe ramifications of the ‘Inactivity Pandemic’ through four strategic approaches – education, supporting school-based activity programs, a national event and advocating – which will get Americans, especially our youth, more active, fit and healthy. Companies or individuals interested in helping PHIT America fight the ‘Inactivity Pandemic’ should contact PHIT America at Alliance@PHITAmerica.org.
