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There is an urgent need for scalable interventions to promote physical activity in early childhood. An early childhood education and care physical activity policy intervention with implementation support strategies (Play Active) has been proposed for scale-up in Australia.
Robust evaluation is critical for understanding and enhancing the impact of health promotion initiatives. However, many community-based organisations face challenges in planning and conducting evaluation due to limitations in knowledge, resources, and the applicability of existing evaluation frameworks. The Healthway Evaluation Framework, and its accompanying practical Measurement Toolkit, was designed to support evaluation planning, implementation, and reporting across diverse health promotion programs and settings.
Movement is at the core of human existence. For infants and children, exploratory movement offers a scaffold for important learning and development outcomes, and in adolescents and adults, regular activity is key for promoting good physical and mental health.
International guidelines recommend multidisciplinary intervention programs for addressing childhood obesity. In Western Australia, community-based healthy lifestyle programs for children and young people are insufficient for demand, especially for those over-represented in obesity statistics relating to prevalence. This protocol outlines the implementation and evaluation of an adapted, evidenced, community-based program in Perth, Western Australia.
Assessment of motor competence is critical for planning and monitoring children's development. However, many assessment tools require time, training, and resources not available to most teachers. We aimed to evaluate the external aspect of construct validity of a rapid product-oriented fundamental movement skill assessment tool designed specifically for primary education settings.
Youth sports programs provide an opportunity to embed mental health and wellbeing programs to reach young people with mental health support. The aims of this study were to (a) examine mental health outcomes from a youth sports program including a mental health program (Life-Fit-Learning) in adolescent boys and girls, and (b) among the larger cohort of adolescent boys, to examine whether partial or full completion of Life-Fit-Learning yielded different outcomes for boys within healthy and high-risk ranges for anxiety, depression and behavioral concerns.
Despite evidence suggesting regular exercise (i.e. structured, repetitive and purposeful physical activity) attenuates cardiac patients’ decline in health, our understanding of factors affecting long-term exercise participation among this patient cohort is limited. This problem is pertinent, given that less than half of cardiac patients adhere to exercise following discharge from formal exercise-based rehabilitation programmes. In this study, we explored factors influencing exercise participation after an outpatient cardiac rehabilitation programme.
Childhood is a critical period for the development of movement behaviours such as physical activity, sleep and sedentary behaviour. The PLAYCE Cohort was established to investigate how movement behaviours change over early to middle childhood, across key behaviour settings and relationships with health and development. An overview of the PLAYCE cohort, summary of key findings to date, and future research opportunities are presented.
High levels of sedentary behaviour are associated with poor child health outcomes such as obesity. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services are a key intervention setting. Most ECEC policy-based interventions focus on children's nutrition and physical activity with few aimed at children's sedentary behaviour.
There is currently limited data regarding the physical activity behaviors of trans and gender diverse people (including binary and non-binary identities; henceforth trans). The aim of this review was to synthesize the existing literature in this area, with a focus on physical activity behaviors as they relate to health (e.g. health benefits, risks of adverse health outcomes).