None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Childcare services are an important setting for interventions to improve child physical activity as they provide access to large numbers of children at a critical period in the development of healthy behaviours. Implementing brief structured physical activity sessions (energisers) may represent a simple and effective strategy which is suitable to ‘scale-up’ for population-wide implementation. However while several studies have investigated the impact of energisers on school-aged children’s physical activity, few have rigorously evaluated the impact of such an intervention on the activity levels of preschool-aged children. This study hypothesises that when compared to children attending control services, children attending intervention services, where three daily energiser are implemented, will spend an additional 10 minutes in moderate to vigorous physical activity per day at childcare. An increase of 10 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity in preschool-aged children has been found to have clinically important effects on fat mass and peak bone mass.
Interventions
An intervention to increase the time children spend in moderate to vigorous physical activity in childcare will be delivered to participating centre-based childcare services randomly allocated to the intervention group. Specifically, within a six hour day (9am-3pm) the intervention will involve childcare services implementing three brief (5 minute) structured physical activity sessions (energisers) each day for children aged 3 to 6 years. The energisers will involve educators leading all childre
An intervention to increase the time children spend in moderate to vigorous physical activity in childcare will be delivered to participating centre-based childcare services randomly allocated to the intervention group. Specifically, within a six hour day (9am-3pm) the intervention will involve childcare services implementing three brief (5 minute) structured physical activity sessions (energisers) each day for children aged 3 to 6 years. The energisers will involve educators leading all children in a brief activity or active game with the aim of increasing children's moderate to vigorous physical activity levels. Suggested energisers will be provided as an educational resource for educators. All other service practices will remain unchanged. Childcare services will receive support from the research team to implement three energisers each week day for a period of six months. The intervention will be guided by the socio-ecological framework and will involve the following components: i) obtaining service manager endorsement of the intervention; ii) face-to-face educational meeting with service manager and lead educators; iii) local consensus process with service manager and educators; iv) provision of educational resources designed specifically for this study; and v) tailored telephone support from the research team on a minimum of two occasions throughout the intervention period.
Sponsors
Hunter New England Population Health
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Prevention
Masking
Blinded (masking used) (Investigator, Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
3 Years to 6 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Centre-based childcare services (long day care services and preschools) To be eligible to participate in the trial, services will be located in the Hunter region of NSW, Australia and will be required to have a daily enrolment of least 40 children aged between 3 to 6 years. Parents For parents to be eligible to participate in the trial, they must have at least one child aged 3 to 6 years attending the childcare service on at least one day of the designated data collection period. Children For children within the service to be eligible to participate in the trial, they must be aged 3 to 6 years, have parental consent and attend childcare on at least one day of the designated data collection period.
Exclusion criteria
Centre-based childcare services (long day care services and preschools) Services catering solely for special needs populations will be excluded from participating in the trial, as will services already implementing daily energisers. NSW Department of Education and Communities services will also be excluded, together with services currently participating in alternate trials aiming to improve nutrition and/or physical activity. Children Children with an intellectual or physical impairment that may impact on their physical activity capacity or prevent them from complying with data collection protocols will be excluded from participating in the trial.
Outcome results
None listed