BMJ  2007;335:703 (6 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.39320.843947.BE (published 20 September 2007)

Research

Effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity in children and adolescents: systematic review of controlled trials

Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit, Institute of Metabolic Sciences, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge CB2 0QQ

Objective To review the published literature on the effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity in children and adolescents.

Design Systematic review.

Data sources Literature search using PubMed, SCOPUS, Psychlit, Ovid Medline, Sportdiscus, and Embase up to December 2006.

Review methods Two independent reviewers assessed studies against the following inclusion criteria: controlled trial, comparison of intervention to promote physical activity with no intervention control condition, participants younger than 18 years, and reported statistical analyses of a physical activity outcome measure. Levels of evidence, accounting for methodological quality, were assessed for three types of intervention, five settings, and three target populations.

Results The literature search identified 57 studies: 33 aimed at children and 24 at adolescents. Twenty four studies were of high methodological quality, including 13 studies in children. Interventions that were found to be effective achieved increases ranging from an additional 2.6 minutes of physical education related physical activity to 283 minutes per week of overall physical activity. Among children, limited evidence for an effect was found for interventions targeting children from low socioeconomic populations, and environmental interventions. Strong evidence was found that school based interventions with involvement of the family or community and multicomponent interventions can increase physical activity in adolescents.

Conclusion Some evidence was found for potentially effective strategies to increase children's levels of physical activity. For adolescents, multicomponent interventions and interventions that included both school and family or community involvement have the potential to make important differences to levels of physical activity and should be promoted. A lack of high quality evaluations hampers conclusions concerning effectiveness, especially among children.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Related Articles

Reasons or excuses for avoiding meta-analysis in forest plots

John P A Ioannidis, Nikolaos A Patsopoulos, and Hannah R Rothstein
BMJ 2008 336: 1413-1415. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Encouraging children and adolescents to be more active

Billie Giles-Corti and Jo Salmon
BMJ 2007 335: 677-678. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Promoting walking and cycling as an alternative to using cars: systematic review

David Ogilvie, Matt Egan, Val Hamilton, and Mark Petticrew
BMJ 2004 329: 763. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Ioannidis, J. P A, Patsopoulos, N. A, Rothstein, H. R (2008). Reasons or excuses for avoiding meta-analysis in forest plots. BMJ 336: 1413-1415 [Full text]  
• Giles-Corti, B., Salmon, J. (2007). Encouraging children and adolescents to be more active. BMJ 335: 677-678 [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Physical activity in childhood and adolescence

Joav Merrick, et al.
bmj.com, 5 Oct 2007 [Full text]

Promoting active life styles in our children

Ediriweera Desapriya, et al.
bmj.com, 10 Oct 2007 [Full text]

Can we get schools on board?

Peter M English
bmj.com, 18 Oct 2007 [Full text]

Other useful sources to complete the picture

Jenny Woodman, et al.
bmj.com, 21 Oct 2007 [Full text]