“Active Living” by Van Kann Article Summary

In recent years, the problem of overweight in children has become especially relevant. They do little physical activity and do not eat well. The need to find successful treatment programs for such children determined the creation of the article “Active Living: Development and quasi-experimental evaluation of a school-centered physical activity intervention for primary school children” (Van Kann et al., 2015). The project aims to increase the physical activity of children in a multi-dimensional way.

The authors of the project note that at this stage, there is an inability of Dutch schools to solve the problem of children’s inactivity on their own. The existence of such a problem determines the need for researchers to intervene. The fact that the article is only eight pages long, excluding literature sources, nevertheless does not affect the depth of analysis. Within the framework of the analyzed project, the authors developed activities for schools where “a research unit and a practice unit continuously interact”(Van Kann et al., 2015, p. 1). The authors use a quasi-experimental study design to assess the effectiveness of interventions.

The improvement in physical activity levels is the primary outcome of the Active Living research. The authors managed to prove the relationship between environmental interventions and physical activity. However, additional studies are planned to confirm the results. In these future studies, the authors plan to expand the study area and the number of project participants. Although even now, the results obtained from the research can be used for future changes in schools aimed at improving the health of students.

The article I read made me think about how the activity of schoolchildren in American schools is ensured. I wanted to do a similar study after analyzing this article. If the inability of American schools in my area of residence to provide the activity for schoolchildren will be confirmed, then perhaps attention should be paid to the analyzed project of the authors to solve the problem.

Reference

Van Kann, D. H., Jansen, M. W., de Vries, S. I., de Vries, N. K., & Kremers, S. P. (2015). Active Living: Development and quasi-experimental evaluation of a school-centered physical activity intervention for primary school children. BMC Public Health, 15, 1315. Web.