Monitoring the Health of U.S. Professional Athletes : The Body Mass Index of NBA and WNBA Players, 2005-2006

TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE Introduction...................................................................... CHAPTER TWO Conceptualizing Health: What is Good Health?...... CHAPTER THREE Methodology, Data Availability and Limitations of Study....... CHAPTER FOUR Findings/Results.................................................................. _________________________________________ 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. _______________________________________ Amadu Jacky Kaba is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Seton Hall University's Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work. He is the author of two books and over 60 scholarly articles in leading journals, magazines and edited books. Kaba was a member of the Seton Hall University Men's Basketball team from 1994 to 1998. From July 2002 to June 2005, he worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the renowned social scientist, Dr. Ali A. Mazrui, teaching and conducting research at Binghamton University, New York, and Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Kaba earned all of his degrees from Seton Hall University: B.A. in Political Science (minor in Sociology) in 1997; Master's in Public Administration in 1998; and Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership, Management and Policy in May 2002.