First of all, thank you very much for inviting us here to talk about this really important topic. I'm going to start with just a couple of words about our institute and then I'll be presenting data and some recommendations.
The Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute has been informing policy at the federal level on physical activities since 1981. More recently, we've been working very closely with our provincial/territorial counterparts who are responsible for active living and sport. We do that by looking at the scientific evidence, the capacity of the system to act, looking at things like national strategies that are being developed. We've been involved in the development of the pan-Canadian physical activity strategy and advised on the healthy living strategy and so on. But more importantly, what I'm going to talk about today is the current situation in terms of population statistics and then what we know is happening in municipalities and schools.
The data I am presenting is from our physical activity monitoring system, which covers a range of indicators from policy and practice in various settings through individual factors that would influence behaviour, such as attitudes, supportive social roles, like parents providing supports for children, and what goes on in settings and communities. We have been collecting this data regularly since 1995 on a five-year cycle and we are most of the way through our second cycle. The data that I'm going to present will probably be touched upon a bit by Dr. Tremblay, as well. Some of it comes from the Canadian community health survey. The remainder comes from our own surveys--the physical activity monitor, our school survey--and municipal surveys. I just want to mention that, although we've been involved in this since 1981, we've been mainly tracking adult leisure-time physical activity patterns, with a focus on children really starting in 2000.
The Canadian community health survey shows that about 70% of our children are getting about the equivalent of 30 minutes walking daily. That is much higher than adults. However, from other guidelines that are presented internationally that would recommend around six METS, or the equivalent of an hour walking, we see that only about 20% of our teenagers are reporting that level of physical activity in their leisure time.
More recently, we were interested in looking at objective measures of physical activity for children and youth from ages five through 19, and we've just completed a study of 6,000 children wearing pedometers and counting the steps they take every day. That includes leisure-time physical activity, walking to school, phys. ed. classes, recreation opportunities, etc. What we see is that boys, on average, take more steps than girls--around 12,000 steps daily--compared to about 10,500 for girls. There are differences across the country, with children living in B.C. and the north taking more steps than children in the east, and that is consistent with what we've seen from the teenage leisure-time activity results from the CCHS, or the Canadian community health survey. The other thing we see is there's a sharp decline by age for both boys and girls, looking at five to nine-year-olds through teenagers. If we look at five-year-old to ten-year-old boys, they're accumulating about 12,500 steps a day, and it goes down to about 10,000 steps with teenage boys. For teenage girls, it's a little sharper decline.
That sounds like a lot of steps. So, is that good enough? It's really hard for us to answer that question. There are many different guidelines at the moment that are being explored. One of them is by researcher Dr. Epstein, who says 120 to 150 minutes of total activity over the whole day, so it would correspond to our step data. And if we try to translate that into a cut point for steps, it's about 15,000 steps. If we look at that, there are only 15% of our children who are meeting that requirement. And again, there are sharp differences between boys and girls, and there is quite a sharp decline across the age groups. So what we see is about 20% of five-year-old to ten-year-old children who would reach that level and it's down to about 9% in teenagers.
If we look at the preferences of children, what they'd like to do during their recreational activities, parents say that most children prefer different kinds of characteristics in their recreational activities. That's the majority. We see, for example, that about a quarter of children who do have a preference say they would prefer more active types of activity. That is down for teenage boys compared to five years ago. Where there's a difference between unorganized and organized activity, the preference tends to be toward unorganized. Between vigorous intensity or moderate-intensity activity, there is no difference, and between non-competitive and competitive, non-competitive tends to be preferred.
If we look at what parents are doing to encourage and support children's activities, about a third of parents say that they play active games with their children, but about a third rarely do so.
The good news, perhaps, is that currently, unlike five years ago, parents of girls are more likely to say that they play with girls in active games. That speaks well to some of the strategies that have been put in place to encourage physical activity among girls.
Parents also could provide transportation to events, and about 55% of parents say that they do that, but that's down from five years ago. Similarly, parents volunteer at school or in recreation and sports activities, and about 40% of parents, roughly, do that. But again, that's down from five years ago. Also, two-thirds of parents provide some form of financial support to encourage participation among their children.
Most municipalities provide special programming for children. About 66% say that they do so for children at risk, and about 65% of municipalities provide discounts for low-income families, so there is still room there for some movement.
There are barriers to being more active. According to about a third of parents, there aren't enough programs and facilities nearby for their children to be active. Also, about one-quarter say that the hours and class times don't meet their children's needs.
Another setting where we're trying to encourage physical activity is in the school system. Fewer than one in five children have daily physical education at school, yet parents think that's a good source of physical activity for their children and where they're active.
Fewer than half of children say they really enjoy physical education classes, or their parents say they really enjoy them, and an equivalent number, about 40%, say that those opportunities actually meet their children's needs.
What does the literature tell us we could do to increase physical activity? One thing it says is that we could hold mass events. There are a number of programs, like Go for Green's walking school bus, that are going on in Canada. Others are social marketing campaigns. There is a good example in the United States, the VERB campaign, which has shown increased awareness and a change in attitude among children and youth. The evidence there is that a single, clear message is effective, not multiple messages.
School-based programs to increase physical activity, and physical education classes and social support from family and peers, have also been shown to work.
Community programs and environmental-change strategies, like making our environment safer for kids to play, are promising areas, but there is little research done at this point to really underscore how effective they are.
One thing we do know, though, is that if children play outside after school, they tend to be more active than other children, but we don't know if those children who didn't play outside were then put outside after school they would play more. Nonetheless, it looks like a promising approach.
Our real challenge is to re-engineer physical activity back into children's lives and make activity the social norm for children.
What we need to do is make the environments where children live, play, and learn ones that support physical activity. In order to do this, we really need to emphasize the needs and preferences of children. I would say particularly for girls and low-income children, we need to see what challenges there are.
We recommend that there be a social marketing campaign that reflects the needs and interests of children. It should have a single, clear message. There's a lot of concern about obesity, but I do not believe that an obesity campaign aimed at children is the solution.
We need to look more at the root causes and look at a diet or a physical activity campaign. In particular I would say that we shouldn't combine those messages. We should think again about a single, clear message. We might have multiple campaigns, but each campaign should have a clear message. Also they need to continue over time so that they reinforce each other. They won't have an immediate effect.
We also need to look at environmental changes to increase physical activity, and think about things like physical activity trails, bicycle lanes, and physical activity facilities, and how to encourage their use.
We also need to look at policies that encourage mandatory physical education in schools. We need to tie them to curriculum outcomes so that they really are mandatory and have the things we are trying to achieve clearly associated with them.
We also need to overcome some of the societal barriers, because I really believe this is a societal and systemic problem. We need to look at our transportation systems to encourage active transportation for children and address safety concerns. And we need to look at things like screen time amongst youth.
I'd also recommend that we allocate 15% to 20% of all budgets to programs for evaluation, so that we can really understand better what works and what doesn't work, and why it does and why it doesn't. We then have to disseminate these evaluations, both to help shape the scientific literatures so we can add to the knowledge, and so we can share from community to community what works.
Thank you.