Welcome to Georgia SHAPE. And welcome to a new, more fit Georgia.
Georgia SHAPE is an exciting initiative to improve Georgia’s future, beginning with our state’s most vital and important asset: our young people. We know all children can benefit from knowledge of their current health-related fitness levels, along with a capacity to develop and implement strategies for personal improvement.
Under the leadership of Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, Georgia SHAPE is a network of partners, agencies and athletic teams—including the Atlanta Falcons and the Atlanta Braves, the Georgia Department of Public Health, and the Georgia Department of Education—all committed to improving the health of our young people by offering assistance and opportunity to achieve a greater level of overall fitness.
Georgia SHAPE begins with a basic, benchmark measurement of fitness among our students called FITNESSGRAM. The FITNESSGRAM tool used for SHAPE’s annual standardized fitness assessment evaluates five different parts of health-related fitness, including aerobic capacity, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility and body composition using objective criteria. It also generates reports providing valuable individual, school, and state-level data to empower parents, schools, and the community to best access the current health needs for children in Georgia. The report is delivered confidentially to families and aggregate results are reported to create a true “snapshot” and highlight areas for improvement.
Georgia SHAPE takes the next step in offering resources to learn more about FITNESSGRAM, healthy recipes and a first-of-its-kind Fitness at Your Fingertips app to locate local health and fitness activities throughout Georgia.
When schools participate in the SHAPE initiative, their physical education teachers receive professional training about testing protocol and data entry, and they will be supplied with the equipment, software and technical support needed to conduct the assessment in their school. Participants will also be eligible for the governor’s award and recognition program, which will provide exciting incentives for teachers and schools.
Children and parents will benefit from the program in several ways. Parents will receive reports detailing their child’s fitness level along with recommendations for improvement. These results encourage important conversations about physical health and fitness and endorse a long-term view of health that promotes lifelong habits of physical activity. Longer term, consistent data collection on health-related fitness standards will establish baseline data, provide an opportunity to track and monitor trends and encourage the development of strategies to improve health-related fitness in Georgia’s youth that are measurable and result-driven.
