Abstract

Sport and physical activity are indispensable for a healthy development of children and young people. The lack of physical activity and the resulting prevalence of overweight and obesity armong children has become a growing problem in industrialized countries. International studies show that the proportion of obese children has risen by around 10 percent each decade. A number of health problems can arise from this development. Three key questions have to be answered in this context: Why do children and young people need physical activity? How much physical activity and/or sport are necessary for a healthy development? Which problems arise from physical inactivity? Intervention programmes are necessary to fight against these problems. The Cologne so-called CHILT project is presented as one of these kinds of programmes. In the first step the anthropometric data were collected from first-grade children, in the second step a special intervention programme was introduced and analyzed. Zusammenfassung