Daycare environment affects kids' activity levels

By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children who attend daycare centers that offer plenty of opportunities for physical activity spend more time being active, a new study confirms.

Having enough play equipment on hand and the room to use it were also key factors in how active kids were, as were staff training and education on physical activity, Dr. Derek P. Hales of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and colleagues found.

"It's about finding things they enjoy and just reinforcing that behavior, because they really want to play," Hales told Reuters Health.

Hales and his team used a new scoring system, the Environment and Policy Assessment and Observation (EPAO) instrument, to evaluate the physical environment of 20 childcare centers, the behavior and training of staff, and policies on physical activity. They then observed children in each center over a 2-day period.

Children who attended the centers with the highest EPAO scores were indeed more active and spent less time on sedentary activities, the researchers found.

Those attending childcare centers that scored above the median spent 15 percent of their time on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and 50 percent of their time doing sedentary activities, while children at centers that scored below the median were active for 9 percent of their time and sedentary for 61 percent.

Children in high-scoring centers spent about 80 more minutes on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and 140 fewer minutes being sedentary than their peers at low-scoring centers.

The availability of portable play equipment, such as hula hoops, balls and bikes were also linked to children's activity levels, as were opportunities for being active, availability of fixed play equipment, such as swing sets and slides, and staff training and education on physical activity, the researchers found.

"The easiest and least expensive means of increasing physical activity may be as simple as providing more active play time, but other aspects of a supportive environment also appear to promote physical activity," Hales and his colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, January 2008.