Coached extracurricular activities may help prevent pre-adolescent smoking and drinking

(The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth) Dartmouth researchers have found that tweens (preadolescents aged 10-14) who participate in a coached team sport a few times a week or more are less likely to try smoking. Their findings on the relationship between extracurricular activity and health risk behaviors are reported in 'The relative roles of types of extracurricular activity on smoking and drinking initiation among tweens,' which was recently published in Academic Pediatrics.