Journal of Healthy Eating and Active Living

If healthy eating and active living are medicine, we need more places to fill the prescriptions.

Justin Moore — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0700

School-based physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0700

School closures and restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic changed opportunities for youth physical activity (PA). We sought to identify school and other contextual conditions associated with youth PA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 500 parents of children ages 6-10 years old and 500 parent-child dyads with children and adolescents ages 11-17 years old who completed a web-based questionnaire. Quotas and demographic matching were used to generate a sample that was representative of United States adults on key demographic characteristics. Multivariable linear regression was used to assess the association between days per week of at least 60 minutes of PA with school, family, and neighborhood characteristics, controlling for child age and gender. Youth engaged in more days per week of PA when they attended school in person (B=0.75, SE=0.22, p<0.001), participated in school physical education (PE) (B=0.83, SE=0.23, p<0.001), school sports (B=0.98, SE=0.25, p<0.001), and community sports (B=0.68, SE=0.23, p=0.003), and had parents that engaged in high versus low levels of PA, (B=1.22, SE=0.21, p<0.001). The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted youth PA, in part, due to restriction of school-based PA opportunities. During future pandemics or conditions that necessitate remote learning, attention to opportunities for PA outside of PE class may be important for equitable PA promotion.

Goal Setting, Movement Behaviors, and Perceived Health during an Online Health Coaching Intervention

Lingyi Fu, Ryan Burns, Yuhuan Xie, Julie Lucero, Timothy Brusseau, Yang Bai — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0700

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations of goal setting, movement behaviors, and health perceptions in young adults after an online health coaching intervention. Participants were young adults from a university within the western United States (N=257; 57.2% female). Participants met with health coaches in an online setting for one hour and goals were set for two behavior areas. Physical activity (PA), sitting time, sleep, and perceptions of general health and emotional wellbeing (health perceptions) were collected at baseline and at 2- and 4-weeks after the coaching session. Mediation analyses determined the associations of the health coaching session with goal setting on self-reported general health and emotional wellbeing and the indirect associations of each movement behavior. No movement behavior positively mediated the associations between the health coaching session and any of the health perception outcomes, although PA, sitting time, and weeknight sleep at 2-weeks associated with general health at 4-weeks (b=0.17–0.39, p<0.01) and associated with emotional wellbeing at 4-weeks (b=0.16–0.21, p<0.01). Emotional wellbeing mediated the associations of the health coaching session on general health (IE=0.19, p<0.001) and general health mediated the association of the health coaching session on emotional wellbeing (IE=0.09, p<0.001). Movement behaviors correlated with self-reported general health and emotional wellbeing, but no positive mediating associations were observed. Emotional wellbeing mediated the associations of the health coaching session on general health and vice-versa, suggesting a bidirectional association between the two health perceptions.

Trail use and recreational physical activity behavior of trail users and non-users during COVID-19 restrictions in Colorado Springs, Colorado

Nicole E. Odell, M.S., M.Sc., Joey A. Lee, Ph.D. — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Physical activity (PA) is important health behavior that was impacted for many by the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In many places, indoor recreational facilities were required to close; however, many outdoor spaces like trails were available for recreational use. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of a mixed-use trail before, during, and after COVID-19 restrictions in a large Colorado city and explore if recreational PA behavior differed between trail users and non-users during those periods. Trail user counts on a mixed-use trail were extracted for 2019 and 2020 from continuous-count data. Trail use habits and recreational PA behavior from before, during, and after restrictions were collected via a retrospective internet survey (N=183). Minutes per week of walking, moderate-to-vigorous PA and total PA were calculated from survey responses. Trail use data were analyzed with a two-way ANOVA and PA data were analyzed with a two-way repeated measures ANOVA. Trail use (average count/day) during COVID-19 restrictions was greater than before by 178 users and after by 96 users. During restrictions, trail users reported 153.5 more minutes of total PA per week than non-users. These results suggest the importance of maintaining accessible outdoor infrastructure for promoting positive PA behaviors in general, and especially in a pandemic situation.