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Childhood Obesity and Physical Activity-Friendly School Environments.
- Source :
-
The Journal of pediatrics [J Pediatr] 2017 Dec; Vol. 191, pp. 110-116. Date of Electronic Publication: 2017 Oct 04. - Publication Year :
- 2017
-
Abstract
- Objective: Childhood obesity may be related to school environment, but previous studies often focused on food environment only. This study aimed to examine the relationship between school physical activity environment and childhood obesity.<br />Study Design: This is a cross-sectional study with multilevel data collected on school physical activity environment using teacher questionnaires, students' growth, and obesity status from electronic health records, and neighborhood socioeconomic status from census data.<br />Results: This study included 208 280 students (6-18 years of age) from 438 schools (45% of Hong Kong). Prevalence of obesity was 5.0%. After controlling for socioeconomic status and intraschool correlation, robust Poisson regression revealed a reduced obesity risk associated with higher teachers' perceived physical activity benefits (risk ratio 0.96, 95% CI 0.94-0.99, P = .02), physical activity teaching experience (0.93, 0.91-0.96, P < .001), school campus size (0.93, 0.87-0.99, P = .02), physical activity ethos (0.91, 0.88-0.94, P < .001), number of physical activity programs (0.93, 0.90-0.96, P < .001), and physical activity facilities (0.87, 0.84-0.90, P < .001). Students in schools with at least 3 physical activity-friendly environmental factors (11.7%) had a much lower risk of obesity (0.68, 0.62-0.75, P < .001) than those without (23.7%).<br />Conclusions: A physical activity-friendly school environment is associated with lower risk of obesity. School physical activity environment should be considered in future epidemiologic and intervention studies.<br /> (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
- Subjects :
- Adolescent
Child
Cross-Sectional Studies
Female
Hong Kong epidemiology
Humans
Male
Pediatric Obesity epidemiology
Pediatric Obesity prevention & control
Protective Factors
Regression Analysis
Residence Characteristics
Risk Factors
Social Class
Environment Design statistics & numerical data
Exercise
Pediatric Obesity etiology
Schools statistics & numerical data
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1097-6833
- Volume :
- 191
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- The Journal of pediatrics
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 28987751
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2017.08.017