Physical Pain and Participation in Organized Activities Among U.S. Adolescents

Chronic physical pain is a public health problem among adolescents in the United States. One important consideration for adolescent healthy development is participation in organized activities. Therefore, the study objective was to examine the associations between repeated or chronic physical pain and participation in organized activities overall and by activity type including sports, clubs, and other organized activities (e.g., dance) among U.S. adolescents. This secondary analysis utilized the 2018-2019 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) combined two-year dataset, and included 24,680 adolescents ages 12-17 years. We conducted unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression analyses to examine the relationships between adolescent physical pain and participation in organized activities overall and by type (sports, clubs, other organized activities). Nearly 14% of adolescents had physical pain in the past 12-months. Unadjusted logistic regression model results indicated that adolescents with physical pain were less likely to participate in organized activities (odds ratio [OR] = 0.81, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.66, 0.99) compared to adolescents without physical pain. Concerning specific organized activity type, unadjusted (OR = 0.73, 95%CI = 0.61, 0.86) and adjusted (aOR = 0.83, 95%CI = 0.70, 0.99) model results indicated that adolescents with physical pain were less likely to participate in sports compared to adolescents without physical pain. The current study found that adolescents with physical pain had lower odds of overall participation in organized activities, and specifically sports, when compared to adolescents without physical pain. Findings should be considered when developing and implementing pain prevention and treatment programming for adolescents in school and community settings.