School-Based Exercise to Lower Blood Pressure in High-Risk African American Girls: Project Design and Baseline Findings

Abstract

Adolescents with blood pressures in the upper range of normal are at increased risk for hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD); African American youth are at highest risk. Cardiovascular fitness training programs in schools might reduce the incidence of CVD. Project Heart is an experiment to evaluate the efficacy of school-based aerobic exercise in lowering blood pressure in a high-risk, urban, and largely African-American sample of adolescent girls. This article describes methods found to be effective for: (1) identifying and recruiting 99 high-risk girls from a screening population of 616 girls entering ninth grade in a large urban high school, (2) measuring fitness in girls who are significantly less fit and more obese than their peers, and (3) assessing the impact of fitness training on blood pressure. A submaximal, multistage step test for fitness assessment in high-risk adolescent girls is presented, together with data on baseline heart rate and blood pressure responses to the test. The Project Heart aerobics class and physical education control groups also are described. Student response to Project Heart has been very positive; 81 percent of girls who enrolled in the class expressed a desire to participate in a subsequent maintenance exercise program.