School and family key to adolescent activity
21 September 2007
Physical activity programmes that involve the school and also the family or community are most likely to be successful in boosting adolescents’ physical activity levels. The finding comes from combined analysis of the success of programmes that aim to increase physical activity in adolescents led by Dr Esther van Sluijs of the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge.
The study also gave strong evidence that programmes that include policy or environmental changes, for example additional PE classes, alongside traditional health education are effective in improving adolescents’ physical activity levels.
Dr van Sluijs said:
‘‘Adolescent obesity is on the rise so programmes that are effective in encouraging young people to be more active are good news for their health. Our study found that activity programmes that involve both the school, and the family or community appear to have the greatest beneficial effect in getting adolescents up and about, this suggests the design of future programmes should incorporate these groups. It also shows that combining health education with environmental or policy changes has positive effects on adolescents’ physical activity levels.’’
People who are inactive as children tend to remain inactive as adults, this means they are at increased risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporosis in later life. Developing and evaluating activity programmes is one way to address this to guide development of successful initiatives.
The review considered all of the current published literature on the effectiveness of promoting physical activity to children and adolescents. It found some evidence that programmes aimed at changing children’s environment for example, improving a playground, are likely to be effective at increasing their activity levels.
The study found no evidence that education based initiatives had an impact on either child or adolescent activity levels. The evidence of benefit gained from adding PE classes, PE teacher training or the availability of extra equipment to a health education approach was found to be inconclusive for children, although there was strong evidence of a beneficial effect from this combined approach in adolescents.
In addition, the researchers found strong evidence to support the use of school-based programmes that require family or community involvement, for example, through home assignments or by incorporating physical activity into existing community events.
Initiatives aimed only at girls or ethnic minority groups did not appear to make a difference to their levels of physical activity. The study findings did suggest targeting children from low socioeconomic backgrounds could have a positive effect - an area identified by the study for further investigation.
Dr van Sluijs concluded:
‘‘Overall there was stronger evidence for the success of physical activity programmes among adolescents than among children, this could be because the original studies were of higher quality and included large sample sizes. It may also have been because adolescents are known to be less active than children and so have a greater potential for change.’’
Original research paper: Effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity in children and adolescents: systematic review of controlled trials published in BMJ Online First
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