The Challenge: For many children, summer vacation is a three-month hiatus from the daily responsibilities and scheduled demands they experience during the nine-month school year. Yet the freedoms many adults may remember from their childhood summers — riding bikes to the corner store, walking to the local swimming hole, playing active games with neighborhood friends every day — have become less common among today’s youth.

Make an impact: As policy-makers, practitioners, and researchers continue to work toward reversing the childhood obesity epidemic and ensuring our children grow up at a healthy weight, learning more about what occurs during summer vacation may be critical for informing their efforts.

What the findings are about: This research brief synthesizes what is known about summer weight gain, and how physical activity and diet during the summer may contribute.