Monitoring the Health of U.S. Professional Athletes

Book excerpt: Monitoring the Health of US Professional Athletes examines the health status of professional athletes in the United States, with a focus on the body-mass-index (BMI) of players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) for the 2005-2006 season. The study presents demographic data of the players such as age, height, weight, race, nationality, and academic institutions attended. It also presents data on the salaries of the players. Although public health scholars and medical doctors have cautioned that professional athletes such as basketball and American Football players are more likely to have relatively high BMI due to their muscle mass, the fact that 50 percent of the NBA players in this study have an average BMI that placed them in the overweight category shows that there is a prevalence of overweight players in the league. The study discusses the implications of this for the health of the athletes and the game of basketball in general.