Marathon Kids

Marathon Kids helps shape the choices people make when it comes to physical activity and nutrition. Our evidence-based program helps elementary school children, families, schools, organizations, and communities overcome the negative health effects caused by sedentary lifestyles and poor food choice and access.

Despite many efforts to tackle these complex issues, children continue to suffer the detrimental consequences of physical inactivity. In the short-term, they face childhood obesity and associated health problems, as well as the potential for severely hindered school performance.

Without intervention, the future is grim; as they enter adulthood, they are likely to experience poor physical and mental health plus an increased risk for serious health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, depression, heart disease, and liver disease.

But Marathon Kids can help pave the way for a bright and healthy future.

Our success comes from the solid public health foundation behind our programming. Multiple evaluations conducted by the University of Texas School of Public Health found that Marathon Kids interventions create conditions of social support, self-efficacy, collective efficacy, incentivization, modeling, and community diffusion.

These principles related to public health behavioral theory are pivotal to our strategies. They ensure that our program provides the motivations, tools, and success to mitigate the effects associated with sedentary lifestyles and poor food access.

Ultimately, Marathon Kids seeks to change the dialogue so that we can truly make a difference by improving the long-term health of children. Happier and healthier lives are achievable. Marathon Kids aims to transform the future for our children by getting kids moving again. Kids were made to move and active kids do better!

Regular activity has been proven to improve concentration, help memory retention, improve classroom behavior, and improve attitudes toward learning. The benefits extend into every aspect of a child's life: confidence, social skills, lifelong educational attainment, earnings potential, etc.

Only 1 in 5 children receive the recommended amount of physical activity per day and the consequences go far beyond the physical. Given that children spend 6-8 hours in school per day it seems obvious that partnering with school districts is vital to impacting the issue. For that reason Marathon Kids has placed great emphasis on partnering with the Austin Independent School District (AISD) to involve all 1st-5th graders in the program for free.

The participation of these 35,000+ children represents a unique approach to combatting the inactivity epidemic affecting today's children by ensuring they are active for at least 10 minutes every day. Without Marathon Kids programming AISD is like most other school districts where children only receive PE programming every three days.

A recent study by Shore Research and in conjunction with AISD's Research and Evaluation Department found the following:

- 98.4% of the students were in MVPA (>100 steps per min) while participating in the Marathon Kids program.
(The percentage of students in the Healthy Zone for Cardio Health increased by 9 percentage points from the pre-test to post-test.)
- 33% of parents said they ran weekly with their child.
- 73% of parents said they made sure their child had time to run outside of school on a weekly basis.
- 75% of parents offered fruits and vegetables to fuel a healthy lifestyle everyday.

Our Needs

Every dollar given to Marathon Kids ensures that children are able to participate in our program, thus creating conditions through which a child can create a healthier future.

We celebrate each student's achievement with exclusive Nike rewards and a ceremony to create an experience an adult runner would have after completing a marathon.

In order for Marathon Kids to provide this experience to children at no cost to them nor to their families, we rely on the generous support of those in our community who want to help children make better choices for themselves.