24 hour movement behaviours and the health and development of pre-school children from Zimbabwean settings: the SUNRISE pilot study

Abstract

Background: In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) released global guidelines for physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for the early years. The International Study of Movement Behaviours in the Early Years, SUNRISE, aimed to assess the extent to which children aged three and four years meet the WHO global guidelines and its association with health and development. Objectives: To assess movement behaviours in pre-school children from low-income settings in Zimbabwe and to establish associations between these movement behaviours and adiposity, motor skills and executive function.Methods: Pre-school children/caregivers were recruited from two urban and two rural public schools respectively in Zimbabwe. The caregivers answered questions on the children’s physical activity, screen time, sedentary behaviour and sleep patterns. Children’s movement behaviours were objectively measured using accelerometers. Gross and fine motor skills and executive function were assessed using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-3 and Early Years Toolbox, respectively. Focus group discussions were carried out with caregivers and teachers on the acceptability and feasibility of the study. Results: Eighty-one children participated in the study. The proportions of children meeting the guidelines were physical activity 92%, sedentary behaviour 70%, and sleep 86%, and all guidelines combined 24%. Boys and girls were similar (p>0.05 for all variables) for all executive function variables, but rural children had significantly lower inhibition scores (p=0.026) than urban children. Conclusion: The study adds to the growing literature on movement behaviours and associated risk factors in low-resourced settings. Further investigations of movement behaviours in this age group in Zimbabwe are recommended.

Adherence to the WHO guidelines and associations with socio- demographic factors among Ethiopian preschool children: The SUNRISE study

“…A possible reason is that a higher proportion of Ethiopian children met the physical activity and sleep guidelines. These ndings are consistent with earlier studies regarding compliance with physical activity [4,11,15,18,19], sleep [4-6, 15, 18] and sedentary behaviour guidelines [5,13,15].…”

“…Our study found that there was no signi cant difference between boys and girls in meeting the individual and combined WHO guidelines. These ndings were consistent with several previous studies [9,14,15,19]. Conversely, our results were in contrast with some evidence reported for combined [21,43], physical activity [22,43] and sleep [43].…”

“…where 'n' is the required sample size, 'z' is the statistic corresponding to the level of con dence, set at 95% (1.96), 'p' is the expected proportion of children meeting all three movement behaviour guidelines taken from a similar study conducted in Zimbabwe (24%) [15] and 'd' is the margin of sampling error tolerated (0.05).…”

“…As a result, the WHO has called for more evidence on 24-hour movement behaviours from low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) [1]. So far, studies have reported adherence to the guidelines and socio-demographic differences [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. However, little data exist on 24-hour movement behaviours in Sub-Saharan African countries and none from Ethiopia [23].…”

Compliance with the 24‐h movement behaviors guidelines among urban and rural Brazilian preschoolers

“…In the urban setting, none of the preschoolers, independent of age, comply with the three recommendations simultaneously, which is under the 3% we previously observed in a similar Brazilian urban context (de Lucena Martins et al, 2021). In analogous low‐middle income backgrounds, pilot studies conducted with South African (Draper et al, 2020), Zimbabwean (Munambah et al, 2021), and Vietnamese (Kim et al, 2022) children reported 26%, 24%, and 17.5% compliance with the overall guidelines, respectively. Moreover, in the three contexts, South African ( n = 77), Zimbabwean ( n = 81), and Vietnamese ( n = 103) preschoolers were highly compliant with PA guidelines (84%, 92%, and 50.4%, respectively).…”