Irish Para Report Card on Physical Activity of Children and Adolescents With Disabilities

Abstract

For the first time, data on children and adolescents with disabilities in Ireland are reported based on the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance Para Report Card methodology. The most recent data from the last 10 years were used in the grading process (A+ to F), and indicators with insufficient data were graded as incomplete. Of the 10 indicators from the Global Matrix Para Report Cards, grades were assigned to Overall Physical Activity (F), Organized Sport (D), Active Transport (D−), Sedentary Behaviors (D−), Family & Peers (C), School (C−), Community & Environment (B−), and Government (B). Irish disability sport organizations were invited to assess the research-led audit and provided commentary around the final grading. The contextual discussion of the grades is presented through the lens of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats with the purpose being to provide direction for the reduction of physical activity disparities among children with disabilities.

“WOT” Do We Know and Do About Physical Activity of Children and Adolescents With Disabilities? A SWOT-Oriented Synthesis of Para Report Cards

“…Local teams that participated in the Para Report Cards within this special issue were asked to include interpretations related to their report cards' grades, and it was recommended to use a SWOT analysis framework. Specifically, submitted manuscripts from Brazil (Silva & da Silva, 2022), Canada (Arbour-Nicitopoulos et al, 2022), Finland (Asunta et al, 2022), France (Aubert, Verdot, et al, 2022), Hong Kong (Sit, Huang, et al, 2022), Ireland (Ng, Healy, et al, 2022), Israel (Hutzler et al, 2022), Lithuania (Pozeriene et al, in press), South Korea (Lee et al, 2022), Spain (Lo ´pez-Gil et al, in press), and the United States (Stanish et al, 2023) were collated for this synthesis. Documents submitted at the time of auditor review were used for Chile, Philippines (Kang et al, 2022), and Poland.…”

“…Nevertheless, it appears that although guidelines for utilizing such measures in CAWD have been published (Klavina et al, 2017), there remains a lack of knowledge for where to find the appropriate assessment tools and how best to use such tools among researchers and professionals serving CAWD. It should be acknowledged that these resources were not included in the adapted Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance Global Matrix benchmarks provided to the Para Report Card teams (Ng, Healy, et al, 2022). Finding appropriate normative values for CAWD is a complex task and requires further development (Király et al, 2019).…”

Adapted Physical Activity Policies for Children and Adolescents in Brazil: Extension of the Para Report Card Brazil

“…This research is part of the Global Matrix on Para Report Cards of physical activity of children and adolescents with disabilities (Ng et al, 2022), and it is a parallel study to the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance Global Matrix (version 4.0; Aubert et al, 2022). Researchers in Brazil have participated in earlier editions of the Global Matrix in 2016 and 2018, although this is the first time information on physical activity of children and adolescents with disabilities are reported using the same methodology as the Global Matrix project.…”

“…A group of experts met to gather the best evidence on all 10 main indicators of the Global Matrix project (overall physical activity, organized sport and physical activity, active play, active transportation, sedentary behavior, physical fitness, family and peers, school, community and environment, and government). The benchmark for each of the indicators is reported elsewhere in this special issue and in the Global Matrix (version 4.0; Ng et al, 2022). The complete results of all these indicators for the Brazil can be accessed in Supplementary Material S1 (available online).…”

Surveillance to improve physical activity of children and adolescents

“…In the absence of systematic surveillance, inequalities will not usually be visible and will, therefore, not be targeted by physical activity policy or interventions. 7 , 9 Moreover, particular groups of children have been underrepresented or actively excluded from public health surveillance of physical activity, including: (i) those with a chronic disease or disability; 28 (ii) those who do not attend school, which is especially common in low- and middle-income countries; (iii) those who live in rural settings, who still comprise the majority in many low- and middle-income countries; and (iv) those belonging to indigenous populations. It is also difficult to survey the physical activity associated with child labour, which is often ignored and clearly unethical.…”