Few care about these unneeded deaths

The emphasis for the formation of RID began in the late 1990’s when Dr. Ellie Ehrenfeld, the Director of the Center for Scientific Review, stated, “For example, researchers perceive that there are no appropriate study sections for some newly emerging fields; that applications describing some of the most productive, highest impact work may be assigned to too few study sections, causing too much of the "best science" to compete with itself; that the scope of some study sections is restricted to research with relatively low impact, resulting in undeserved 'entitlements;' and that the breadth of knowledge needed to assess the importance and potential impact of research proposals may sometimes be sacrificed when narrowly focused review committees are formed.”

Dr Booth and several colleagues saw a need to begin to defend exercise research due to the possibility that certain misconceptions about exercise-related research would infiltrate funding decisions made at NIH. One of these misconceptions arises from a NIH press release, “They must be due to changes in the environment, including diet and physical activity, which may produce disease in genetically predisposed persons”. Dr. Booth and others recognized a fundamental concept that physical inactivity, not exercise, is an actual cause of death. RID was formed to fight the battle for funding to generate the requisite knowledge to mechanistically link physical inactivity and many chronic diseases. This information would be then used as a platform for identification of early disease markers and federal initiatives aimed at reducing physical inactivity.

Since the turn of the millennium, several events surrounding NIH funding decisions have led to the systematic removal of research aimed at studying the second leading actual cause of chronic diseases in the United States: inactivity related diseases. Some of these key events include:

1) NIH’s Center for Scientific Review’s decision to eliminate exercise as a topic for review in the Respiratory and Applied Physiology Study Section in the early 2000’s.

2) By neglect, NIH has downsized the mechanisms of disease area of physical activity studies, harming a required translational field to prevent chronic diseases.

3) Today NIH does not list exercise, physical activity, or physical inactivity as any of the 360 research areas supported by NIH research.

In response to the events above, we have generated an illustration that emphasizes the importance of inactivity related diseases that we call “the death counter”. This counter reveals the staggering rate of deaths due to physical inactivity. Sadly, physical inactivity is not currently identified as an important area of research for support by NIH. As a result, this death counter ticks on and it appears that this will continue at an ever increasing rate.

Charting and Changing the Policy Landscape:
Promoting Physical Activity & Reversing Physical Inactivity through Policy Solutions
(ACSM Scientific Roundtable, April 27, 2006)