Effects of a school-based intervention on active commuting to school and health-related fitness

Abstract

BackgroundActive commuting to school has declined over time, and interventions are needed to reverse this trend. The main objective was to investigate the effects of a school-based intervention on active commuting to school and health-related fitness in school-age children of Southern Spain.MethodsA total of 494 children aged 8 to 11 years were invited to participate in the study. The schools were non-randomly allocated (i.e., school level allocation) into the experimental group (EG) or the control group (CG). The EG received an intervention program for 6 months (a monthly activity) focused on increasing the level of active commuting to school and mainly targeting children’s perceptions and attitudes. Active commuting to school and health-related fitness (i.e., cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular fitness and speed-agility), were measured at baseline and at the end of the intervention. Children with valid data on commuting to school at baseline and follow-up, sex, age and distance from home to school were included in the final analysis (n = 251). Data was analyzed through a factorial ANOVA and the Bonferroni post-hoc test.ResultsAt follow up, the EG had higher rates of cycling to school than CG for boys only (p = 0.04), but not for walking to school for boys or girls. The EG avoided increases in the rates of passive commuting at follow up, which increased in the CG among girls for car (MD = 1.77; SE = 0.714; p = 0.010) and bus (MD = 1.77; SE = 0.714; p = 0.010) modes. Moreover, we observed significant interactions and main effects between independent variables (study group, sex and assessment time point) on health-related fitness (p < 0.05) over the 6-month period between groups, with higher values in the control group (mainly in boys).ConclusionA school-based intervention focused on increasing active commuting to school was associated with increases in rates of cycling to school among boys, but not for walking to school or health-related fitness. However, the school-based intervention avoided increases in rates of passive commuting in the experimental group, which were significantly increased in girls of the control group.

Cycling to School and Body Composition, Physical Fitness, and Metabolic Syndrome in Children and Adolescents

“…34 Contrary to our findings in both sexes, the Danish study did not find an association between AST and speed and agility assessed by the 4 × 10 m shuttle run test, although the age of their sample differed from ours in the present study (ie, children vs adolescents). 33 A quasi-experimental study that focused on increasing children's AST did not report increases in health-related fitness in boys or girls, 36 suggesting that more research with a randomized clinical trial design is needed.…”

Active Commuting and Physical Fitness: A Systematic Review

“…The only prospective investigation screened showed that active commuting by cycling in children over a span of six years, increased the PF in 14% [33]. On the other hand, in four studies an association between active commuting and PF was not observed [3,29,32,34]. In one study, mixed results were observed.…”

“…From the 11 studies focused on children/adolescents, four were performed in Spain, two in England, two in Norway, one in Sweden, one in Brazil, and one in Colombia. Furthermore, eight were cross-sectional [3,12,[27][28][29][30][31][32], one prospective cohort [33], one quasi-experimental [34], and one experimental [35]. The CRF was the PF attribute assessed the most (nine studies), while MF was assessed in three studies [3,27], and agility in two studies [3,31].…”

“…Active commuting by cycling improves CRF [12,30,35], body composition [12], and muscular strength [27]. One experimental investigation [35] concluded that active commuting improves the CRF, while another quasi-experimental investigation [34] did not find associations between active commuting and PF. The only prospective investigation screened showed that active commuting by cycling in children over a span of six years, increased the PF in 14% [33].…”

Objective Measurement of the Mode of Commuting to School Using GPS: A Pilot Study

“…The exclusion was based on several reasons. First, although preceding studies discovered a 73% agreement between PALMS bicycling and SenseCamp trips [18], the percentages of youth cycling to school in Spain were low (≈1%) [27,28]. Secondly, in the Portuguese study, the cycling trips were overestimated based on the same method to categorize trips, i.e., GPS and PALMS software [10].…”