Search
Despite immense benefits of physical activity on health and developmental outcomes, few children achieve recommended daily levels of physical activity. Given more than half of families with children own a dog, we investigated the effect of a mobile health (mHealth) intervention to encourage dog-facilitated physical activity through increased family dog walking and children's active play with their dog.
Hayley Christian BSc (1st Class Hons), PhD (Distinction) W.Aust. Head, Child Physical Activity, Health and Development; Ascend Senior Research Fellow
Current methods for assessing the healthfulness of 24-hour movement behaviours (sleep, sedentary time, light physical activity, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity) use binary classifications that fail to capture their continuous and compositional nature. This study introduces a percentile-based scoring and visualization approach to evaluate the healthfulness of movement behaviour time-use compositions, using social-emotional development in early childhood as an example.
Food environments are significant drivers of obesity and diet-related diseases, making them key targets for interventions that support healthier food choices. The role of Local Government Authorities is pivotal in shaping community food environments.
Advertising and marketing by the alcohol industry serve to normalise alcohol use, with exposure to alcohol advertising linked to earlier and riskier drinking among young people. Advertising that portrays alcohol use in and around waterways is of particular concern, with one in five fatal drownings being associated with alcohol.
Physical constraints of small apartment kitchens and the influence of the surrounding community food environment may impact food practices of apartment residents. Social media portrayal of these features may influence public perception of apartment living.
Physical activity is crucial for young children's health and development. Many young children do not meet the recommended 3 hours of daily physical activity, including 60 min of energetic play. Early childhood education and care (ECEC/childcare) is a key setting to intervene to improve children's physical activity. The Play Active programme is a scalable evidence-informed ECEC-specific physical activity policy intervention with implementation support strategies to improve educators' physical activity-related practices.
Developing dietary guidelines for lactating women presents significant challenges, due to limited evidence being available on their specific nutrient needs and the biological impacts of various dietary dimensions. Current dietary recommendations often rely on data from nonlactating women, leading to potential inaccuracies.
There is an urgent need for scalable interventions to promote physical activity in early childhood. An early childhood education and care physical activity policy intervention with implementation support strategies (Play Active) has been proposed for scale-up in Australia.
This study investigated adherence to Indonesia's Dietary Guidelines (IDG) among lactating women, examining related factors and association with nutrient intake adequacy, maternal and infant biomarkers, body mass index, and growth. Participants were lactating women (n = 220) from urban and rural West Java, Indonesia. Dietary intake (via 3-day weighed food records), anthropometry and blood samples were assessed. Adherence was evaluated using a scoring system tailored for IDG and adapted from the Healthy Eating Index to assess intake of food groups, sugar, salt, fat, water, coffee, and breakfast habits.