insufficient physical activity, including elevated risks of obesity, back pain, high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease, psychiatric problems and muscle tension. Following this, President Eisenhower issued an executive order establishing the President's Council on Youth Fitness (now the President's Council on Physical Fitness, Sports and Nutrition). Prudden served on the advisory committee for three years. Prudden and Kraus are credited as co-founders of the council. In 2007, Prudden was awarded the council's Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. The YMCA decided to adopt Prudden's methods of teaching exercise and follow her advice to admit women to their buildings for morning classes. Representatives were sent to Prudden's White Plains Institute to be taught Kraus–Weber testing and exercise teaching. They went back to their respective states and set up the Prudden Program in their YMCAs. Prudden became a much sought after speaker, and the YMCAs became the place to go for the Prudden Programs, with "diaper gym and swims", pre-natal classes, and toddler-, mixed teen- and family-oriented classes. Is Your Child Really Fit? was published in 1956. It enlarged on the President's report and outlined the solution to the problem. From 1957 through 1960 Prudden served as a columnist for Sports Illustrated, introducing her fitness program and appearing on the cover in a full-length leotard of her own design. Fitness fashions were born. Attracted by the fitness fashions, The Home Show with Arlene Frances and Hugh Downs booked her for a weekly family fitness TV spot. Following the end of The Home Show, she moved to the Today Show with Dave Garroway, where she remained for two and a half years. She left the show when they started advertising a diet pill in connection with her spot and watchers thought she was endorsing it. At the same time she had regular spots on two radio shows, Tex and Jinx McCrary and Arthur Godfrey. From 1955 through 1975 Prudden continued her crusade for better bodies. She wrote 13 books, countless manuals, set up pilot programs, designed fitness clothing and equipment for home and school, lectured nonstop throughout the country, made six records, two films, and one film strip, established five-day training workshops, and wrote and taped 35 half-hour segments of The Bonnie Prudden Show. These last were so successful that she was contracted for 165 more segments. In 1962 Reader's Digest began underwriting the Prudden Program. This partnership lasted through the mid-1980s. Later life