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Family dogs help kids move and sleep more: new study

Researchers exploring the potential health benefits of pets have found children who regularly walk and play with a family dog are more active, have less screen time, and sleep more.

Dogs are more than companions, they are great for our mental wellbeing

A new study has highlighted the positive impact dog ownership has on our mental health.

PLAYCE Cohort Study: Moving well for optimal child health and development

The PLAYCE Cohort was established to investigate how movement behaviours change over early to late childhood, across key behaviour settings and relationships with health and development

Playful Bytes

Nurturing children's health together: A collaboration between early childhood education and care (ECEC) educators and parents on active play and eating well

Cognitive performance in offspring of parents with severe mental illness: a meta-analysis

Parental severe mental illnesses (SMIs), including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder (MDD), can impact children's well-being, yet existing meta-analyses are limited in scope and methodology and do not comprehensively assess cognitive and academic performance in offspring across SMIs.

Population Perspectives on Nurturing Relational Health from Early Life: A Systematic Review Series

This paper provides the conceptual framework for a new review series that bring together the global literature on population approaches to nurturing relational health across the first three years of life. Early relational health is defined as ‘the everyday interactions that happen between children and their carers across the many settings in which they live and grow.

The impact of a dog-facilitated mobile physical activity intervention on children’s social–emotional development: a randomized controlled trial

Dog ownership has been suggested to be positively associated with children's physical, social, and emotional development. This study investigated the effect of a mobile health dog-facilitated physical activity intervention on young children's social-emotional development and attachment to the family dog.

Temptation at the school fence: a qualitative exploration of the impact of external food outlets on the school community

Retail food outlets are commonly located in close proximity to schools, providing students with opportunities to purchase and consume food enroute to or from school. These outlets are typically unhealthy and disproportionately clustered near schools, and this trend has been increasing over time. While quantitative studies have established associations between school food environments and adolescent dietary behaviours, little is known about how school personnel perceive and experience their impacts.

Dog ownership, dog walking, and physical function in mid-older adults: Findings from the HABITAT cohort study

To examine the longitudinal effects of dog ownership and dog walking on self-reported and objective measures of physical function in mid- to older-aged adults.

Exploring preferences for interventions to increase active school transportation among children and adolescents in Australia

The observed decline in children's active school transport (AST) across numerous countries over recent decades necessitates targeted, multi-level interventions to reverse this trend. However, data on young people's preferred AST interventions is lacking. This study aimed to explore children's preferences for AST interventions and assess differences between AST users and non-users among primary and secondary school students.