Welcome to a new category of my blog simply called ‘Healthy Tips.’ Many times, when I write articles for various publications, I need to find sources for the story. Recently, I wrote an article for Yahoo Shine (click here) and PBS (click here) about keeping kids healthy. I was looking for experts and parents to chime in and give their favorite ‘tips’ to help kids (and their families) lead a healthy lifestyle.

The feedback for the story was amazing. The sources had some fantastic points of view that could not be ignored, and I thought their opinions should be viewed on the Your Health Journal web site.

So, enjoy my new series, with some ‘great’ insight from some ‘great’ people giving exceptional and educational points of view.

“From the perspective of our organization, National Fatherhood Initiative, we are especially interested in the unique contributions dads make to child and family health, and the research has some (possibly) surprising results.”

Here is an example of research that shows that fathers, uniquely and independently of mothers, contribute to child exercise levels and health:

1. Two studies that have looked at the determinants of physical activity in obese and non-obese children found:

* Obese children less likely to report that their father’s were physically active than were the children of non-obese children. This determinant not found for mothers.

* Father’s inactivity strong predictor of children’s inactivity.

Source: Trost SG, Kerr LM, Ward DS, Pate RR. “Physical activity and determinants of physical activity in obese and non-obese children. School of Human Movement Studies, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia.
Source: Fogelholm M, Nuutinen O, Pasanen M, Myohanen E, Saatela T. “Parent-child relationship of physical activity patterns and obesity.” University of Helsinki, Lahti Research and Training Centre, Finland.

You can find more of such research here on our website (www.fatherhood.org):

All of this data is listed in our research publication, Father Facts: http://www.fatherhood.org/organizations/programs/father-facts/overview

– Vincent DiCaro, Vice President, Development and Communication, National Fatherhood Initiative