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The Department of Health and Human Services plans to distribute $10 million to schools next year as part of a nationwide challenge meant to boost participation in the Presidential Fitness Test, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Thursday.
The Presidential Fitness School Innovation Challenge will offer $7 million in prizes to schools, districts, and youth-serving organizations that demonstrate creative and effective ways to implement the test. Another $3 million in awards and vouchers will be available to use for fitness or sports equipment.
Starting Thursday, schools and organizations can apply for the $10 million worth of cash prizes on Fitness.gov. Submissions are due Feb. 5, 2027, after which the winners will be announced sometime next spring.
The goal of the new competition is to “make physical fitness fun again,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said at an event with Kennedy. “Physical fitness … builds confidence, cultivates resilience, shows how strong you can be, not just physically but mentally.”
President Donald Trump began to revive the Presidential Fitness Test through an executive order last year and later signed a memorandum that brought back the competitive test. President Barack Obama phased out the test by 2012 in favor of more health-focused individual assessments over competition. Kennedy doesn’t agree with that approach.
“If we’re going to be competitive internationally, we need to be competitive with each other,” he said at the executive order’s signing ceremony in July 2025. “We need to teach people how to win and how to lose and how to process victory and defeat.”
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Though the Presidential Fitness Test was initially established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, President John F. Kennedy revamped the program when he entered office in 1961. The HHS secretary is following in his uncle’s footsteps by encouraging participation in the fitness test.
“If we want to have healthy minds, we also need to have healthy bodies,” Kennedy told students at a school in Austin, Texas. “The competition and hard work you’re putting in now is going to set you up for the rest of your life. You’re going to know how to stick with it. You’re going to know how to take defeat and failure and get back up and do it again, and that’s going to guarantee you success ultimately.”
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
