epidemiological research

“Fight against the sedentary life”, which is part of the project "Healthy lifestyle", starts with an epidemiological research that will involve over 120,000 High Schools mostly from European nations, but also from other non-European nations such as U.S.A., Canada, Australia, Japan etc. with the involvement of more than 1,000,000 students among males and females aged 14 to 19. This is a multicentric research, developed in two phases (First and Second Phase), which will allow to detect some anthropometric and functional data of utmost importance as indicators of a predisposition to develop, in a long period, pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases, secondary diabetes, osteoporosis, some forms of cancer, depression, etc ..

1. Epidemiological research: first phase.
   Detection and processing of anthropometric and physiological data of students with the absolute respect of the anonymity of the same.
   
   Objectives of the first phase.
   The detection and processing of data will allow to know, at the present state, the variability of anthropometric and physiological data of students according to age, gender (M or F), geographic areas taken in examination, depending on the lifestyle adopted, about the presence or not of nearby sports facilities, the thermal centers and will allow to detect the areas most at risk of the aforementioned pathologies.
   
   
2. Epidemiological Research: second phase.
   It starts with monitoring the actual lifestyle normally adopted by students on the aspect of the motor activity (one-month monitoring period) followed by the adoption of a dynamic lifestyle recommended for those students who voluntarily participate in this phase of the research (duration of monitoring: three months) by providing them goals both at individual and group level.
   
   Objectives of the second phase.
   This second phase of the research will allow:
   1. to detect any discrepancy between real life style (provided by an objective feed-back) and that perceived by students participating in both phases;
   2. urging students to adopt a dynamic lifestyle on a daily basis, they gradually get used to adopting correct habits that can become a lifestyle for their entire existence;
   3. the analysis of data from the first phase with those in the second phase will allow crucial considerations for human health research because it will not only "photograph" the present state of health of the young population of different geographical areas, but will also allow a projection of trend of pathologies closely related to the sedentary life compared to the incidence of the pathologies affecting today's adults in the same geographic areas;
   4. to identify the strategies that need to be taken immediately, so that young people of today, who are tomorrow's adults, should not have a heavy impact on their health.