1011 - Policies for Play: School Recess and Public Health
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
Daily recess has been shown to improve mental health and academic outcomes for children while also providing an opportunity for physical activity and social development. But few states have formal policies that protect dedicated recess time. In this episode: Researchers Rachel Deitch and Erin Hager discuss the public health benefits of recess and their toolkit for advancing state recess laws.
Guests:
Rachel Deitch, MS, is a program officer in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Erin Hager, PhD, is a professor of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she also leads the STRONG Research Program.
Host:
Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.
Show links and related content:
-
Play, Policy, and Potential: A Toolkit to Support Advancing Recess in Schools Through State Laws—Bloomberg American Health Initiative
-
How many states require recess in schools?—@bloombergamericanhealth via Instagram
-
Accountability and Funding for State-Level School Physical Education and Recess Laws—American Journal of Preventative Medicine
Transcript information:
Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel.
Contact us:
Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website.
Follow us:
-
Here's our RSS feed
Note: These podcasts are a conversation between the participants, and do not represent the position of Johns Hopkins University.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh. |
| 0:21.6 | Jh.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jh.org for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:35.1 | Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith-Rogers, and today we look at every student's favorite part of the day, recess. |
| 0:41.0 | Johns Hopkins researchers Aaron Hager and Rachel Dight talked to Stephanie Desmond about why only half of U.S. states have recess mandates, despite evidence that unstructured play during the school day is a key to physical, social, and mental development |
| 0:55.0 | and why they're eager to help more states codify recess time for kids. Let's listen. |
| 1:00.4 | Erin Hager and Rachel Deich, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having us. We're excited to be |
| 1:05.3 | here. So today the topic is recess, which of course I think is a favorite topic of a lot of people, especially |
| 1:11.6 | the elementary school set. But I wanted to talk about whether we get enough recess, whether |
| 1:17.0 | kids have enough time to play in school and talk about some of the work you've done around |
| 1:21.3 | that. Erin, could you talk to us about this toolkit you've created? Yeah, no, we'd love to talk |
| 1:26.2 | about the toolkit. We're very proud of the finished |
| 1:28.1 | product. And really, we sought to create a toolkit around state-level recess policies. And I know |
| 1:33.8 | you mentioned at the start that elementary school said is interested in recess, but we actually |
| 1:37.8 | would love to see middle schoolers also have access to recess. And so we see that as an important |
| 1:42.7 | piece of the school day for all children, |
| 1:44.6 | not just elementary school children. And that was actually the real reason that we started this |
| 1:48.5 | toolkit was to figure out a way to promote recess again for all children, including |
| 1:53.0 | adolescents, even maybe into high school. We know that physical activity is an important part |
| 1:57.7 | of a child's health and development. Kids aren't as active as they should be today. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.