In December 1953, the Journal of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation published an article, “Muscular Fitness and Health,” coauthored by Dr. Hans Kraus and Bonnie Prudden that sounded an alarm about the poor state of youth fitness in America. Within two years, another article by Dr. Kraus and Bonnie Prudden (under the name Ruth P. Hirschland) in the New York State Journal of Medicine reported the results of a study that administered the Kraus-Weber Tests to approximately 4,400 students between ages 6 and 16 in public school systems across the United States and to approximately 3,000 European students in the same age range in Switzerland, Italy, and Austria. A report by Dr. Kraus and Dr. Sonja Weber created concern about the physical fitness of America’s children relative to their European counterparts.

Following the President’s Conference on Fitness of American Youth (held at U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD) in June 1956, President Eisenhower created the President’s Council on Youth Fitness with cabinet-level status, specifying “one” objective for the first Council to be a “catalytic agent” concentrating on creating public awareness. A President’s Citizens – Advisory Committee on Fitness of American Youth, the equivalent to today’s Council, was confirmed to give advice to Council. The Chair was Vice President Richard Nixon. This document was published in 1961 and has a foreword written by John F. Kennedy.