Visualizing effects of lack of physical activity for children

Childhood obesity has been a rising problem in the USA for the last several years and it affects people of color with the highest rate found in African-American and Hispanic children. A drastic increase in childhood obesity has been found in the Hispanic population where almost half (45.5%) of the children are either overweight or obese. CDC reports that in the United States, the percentage of children and adolescents affected by obesity has more than tripled since the 1970s. The prevalence of obesity affects 13.7 million children and adolescents (CDC). Research indicates that childhood obesity is linked to various physical, mental, and emotional health issues. Particular among them are diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, poor self-esteem, and depression.

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Barriers to physical activity

Among many factors, childhood obesity is linked to the lack of physical activity in children. Lack of physical activity or rather the lack of opportunity to engage safely in physical activity is particularly a big problem for lower-income neighborhoods (Knapp, Gustat, Darensbourg, Myers, & Johnson, 2018). Theory of neighborhood disorder research found that neighborhood and parks with a high level of disorder (litter, abandoned buildings, graffiti, broken glass) are less conducive to physical activity (Ross & Mirowsky, 2001, Wilson & Kelling, 1982; LaGrange, Ferraro, & Supancic, 1912, Ellaway, Macintyre, & Bonnefoy, 2005; Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). Neighborhood disorder is positively correlated to fear of crime, perceived lack of safety, and lack of social control proving a barrier to physical activity (Ellaway, Macintyre, & Bonnefoy, 2005; Evenson, Scott, Cohen & Voorhees, 2007; Foster, Giles-Corti & Knuiman, 2010; Weiss, Purciel, Bader, Quinn, Lovasi, Lovasi & Rundle, 2011). Additionally, lower-income neighborhoods are not walkable or bikeable. This is compounded by a sedentary lifestyle of playing video games and watching television.

Benefits of physical activity

CDC recommends engaging children in physical activity to counter the negative mental, physical, and emotional health impacts. Research has shown that physical activity in children is associated with a lower level of stress and anxiety (HHS – Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Report, 2008), positively affect concentration, memory, and classroom behavior among adolescents (Dietz, 2005), and can improve standardized test scores (Sallis, et al, 1999). Ratey & Hagerman (2008) argued that physical activity is crucial to learning and prepares our brain to learn, improves mood and attention, lowers stress and anxiety, helps stave off addiction, and controls the effects of hormonal changes.

Hence the only option for these children is to get some kind of physical activity at the school. The National Association for Sport and Physical Education’s (NASPE) Physical Activity Guidelines recommend that children aged 5 through 12 accumulate a minimum of 60 minutes of activity each day and avoid long periods of inactivity. NASPE’s Physical Education Guidelines recommend elementary schools provide 150 minutes of instructional physical education each week and that middle and high schools provide 225 minutes per week.

School budget cuts

Unfortunately, many schools fail to meet these standards of 150 minutes for elementary school and middle schools. In fact, only 15% of the children achieve the recommended daily average of at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and only 8 percent achieve the school-time recommendation of 30 minutes (Hubbard et al, 2016). CDC reports suggest that only 25% of high school students attend physical education all 5 days and only 24% of children ages 6 to 17 meet the recommendation for 60 minutes of daily physical activity.

Thus, it is fair to say that school environments across America do not provide better opportunities for physical activity for kids. This is particularly true for schools in lower-income school districts. The lack of physical activity in and around schools is partly due to a lack of appropriate infrastructure and partly due to how our schools are funded. A small share of school funding comes from the Federal government around 10% while the rest comes from the combination of state and local dollar. The majority of the funding for schools comes from the property tax. In low-income neighborhoods, the property value is lower making it more difficult for the schools to be funded appropriately. According to this NPR report, the national average amount of money schools spend is about $ 11,841, yet the graph below shows an awful number of schools and counties are unable to meet the national average. School funding is a problem throughout the country and not just located in cities or urban areas. This is partly because there is no protection in the constitution for equal education funding and hence state and local governments are largely on their own.

Emphasis on physical activity

Additionally, the overwhelming emphasis on test scores has severely decreased support for non-academic extras like sports and afterschool programs. The government does not place enough emphasis on the importance of physical activity as they are focusing on the achievement gap and standardized testing. Schools across the country have ignored similar reports for decades, cutting back on physical activities in the name of academic achievement. Teachers’ salaries are tied to improvement in test scores the schools are forced daily and sometimes the entire school year to be reorganized around the test preparations. And when the score remains stagnant, administrators focus even more energy toward testing sometimes resulting in a negative outcome towards the athletic programs. In some cases, recess is also being cut in schools due to the high emphasis on academic excellence and standardized test scores (Abernathy, 2011).

Children in schools with more than 50 percent racial or ethnic minority students and children with 75 percent of students eligible for free or reduced lunch have the lowest number of recess minutes per week (Massey et al., 2017). NASPE recommends at least 20 minutes of recess every day as it provides the opportunity to enhance cooperation and negotiation skills, improves attentiveness, concentration, and time-on-task in the classroom.

Faced with lower funding, schools often have to make tough choices. General measures in the budget cuts are cutting the art teachers, cutting their librarians, and in some cases, they still do not have enough money to retain good teachers. Most administrators are forced to manage the budget as tightly as they can resulting in more slashing of every budget line that does not relate to class performance.

Chaos in the schoolyard

Tighter budgets lead to a lack of playground equipment in schools. Additionally, school and community sports and recreation efforts operate rather independently and the weekend programs rarely address problems that are not related to athletics providing few opportunities for girls and less athletically oriented children to participate. Even when extreme budget cuts are not present, schoolyard in low-income school districts often lacks adult supervision with little to no playground equipment. Lack of equipment results in a reduced amount of support for playing and children often get easily bored. Recess becomes their only time to play. However, without adult supervision and little to no play equipment playing quickly becomes chaotic. Schoolyards become a place consisting of constant chaos, a breeding ground for bullying, fights, and illegal activity. CDC findings suggest that overweight kids are more likely to the target of discrimination and bullying. Schoolyards eventually need disciplinary action such as suspension or even expulsion. Recess is generally treated as a reward to be revoked for misbehavior. Almost report 75 percent of incidents requiring suspension or disciplinary action in today’s schools occur in the schoolyard. Children who received suspension are twice as likely to be arrested during months in which they were forcibly removed from school (Monahan, VanDerhei, Bechtold & Cauffman, 2014).

Downward spiral

National Center for Education Statistics reports that only 54 percent of students from lower-income schools entered college compared to 69 percent of higher-income students. Failure to graduate from high school results in lower-paying jobs pushing them further into generational poverty.

This lack of opportunity for children to engage in physical activity in their neighborhoods and increasingly in schools comes at a high cost of adverse effects the academic achievement, physical and mental health disparities, and cognitive skills (Massey et al., 2017) resulting in a possible free fall in the vicious cycle of poverty. And yet, most government efforts are not able to make a positive dent in the problem.

Social Entrepreneurial solution

This is where social entrepreneurial ventures like Playworks can step in and turn the schoolyard into a productive place for creating a culture of support, learning, positivity, and inclusion. It leverages community resources to meet the needs of disadvantaged children by creating safe and inclusive environments for play and physical activity both within and beyond the school day. Playworks forms partnerships with schools, districts, and after-school programs to reintroduce physical education and include homework help, healthy snacks, and organized sports and games. School administrators consult with Playworks trainers to rework plans for recess and lunch. These trainers run a wide variety of games, sports, and in-class physical activities and learn techniques in group management, violence prevention, and conflict resolution. Playworks provides services to help these children such as, on-site coaches to help guide both the students and faculty in safe and healthy play outside, professional training for school staff to maintain a safe and healthy play environment when trainers are not present and provide equipment that the elementary schools cannot afford to provide the students. Here is the systems map or visualization of what schools face today. Here is a visual representation (systems map) of this problem.

Simulation

This simulation visually represents the problem schools face today. Experiment with the simulation to see what happens when you click the Ʌ to increase the factor or V to decrease the factor. More importantly you can see that when schools focus on using the recess time effectively (by press Ʌ on effective recess), the negative effects disappear over time. Chaos in the school yard decreases as it turns white while health benefits, earning potential etc. increases as these factors get fully colorized. Feel free to experiment with the simulation to see how over time things can change for better or worse.

Simulation

References

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Dietz W. H. (2005). Physical activity recommendations: where do we go from here? The Journal of pediatrics, 146(6), 719–720. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2005.03.035

Ellaway, A., Macintyre, S., & Bonnefoy, X. (2005). Graffiti, greenery, and obesity in adults: secondary analysis of European cross sectional survey. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 331(7517), 611–612. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.38575.664549.F7

Evenson, K. R., Scott, M. M., Cohen, D. A., & Voorhees, C. C. (2007). Girls’ perception of neighborhood factors on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and BMI. Obesity 15(2), 430–445. https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2007.502

Foster, S., Giles-Corti, B., & Knuiman, M. (2010). Neighbourhood design and fear of crime: a social-ecological examination of the correlates of residents’ fear in new suburban housing developments. Health & place, 16(6), 1156–1165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2010.07.007

Hubbard, K., Economos, C. D., Bakun, P., Boulos, R., Chui, K., Mueller, M. P. Sacheck, J. (2016). Disparities in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity among girls and overweight and obese schoolchildren during school- and out-of-school time. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 13(1), 39. doi:10.1186/s12966-016-0358-x

Knapp, M., Gustat, J., Darensbourg, R., Myers, L., & Johnson, C. (2018). The relationships between park quality, park usage, and levels of physical activity in low-income, African American neighborhoods. International Journal of environmental research and public health, 16(1), 85. doi:10.3390/ijerph16010085

LaGrange, R. L., Ferraro, K. F., & Supancic, M. (1992). Perceived risk and fear of crime: Role of social and physical incivilities. Journal of research in crime and delinquency, 29(3), 311-334.

Massey, W. V., Stellino, M. B., Holliday, M., Godbersen, T., Rodia, R., Kucher, G., & Wilkison, M. (2017). The impact of a multi-component physical activity programme in low-income elementary schools. Health Education Journal, 76(5), 517–530. https://doi.org/10.1177/0017896917700681

Monahan, K. C., VanDerhei, S., Bechtold, J., & Cauffman, E. (2014). From the school yard to the squad car: School discipline, truancy, and arrest Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 43(7), 1110-1122.

Ratey, J. J., & Hagerman, E. (Collaborator). (2008). Spark: The revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Co

Ross, C. E., & Mirowsky, J. (2001). Neighborhood disadvantage, disorder, and health. Journal of health and social behavior, 42(3), 258–276.

Sallis, J. F., McKenzie, T. L., Kolody, B., Lewis, M., Marshall, S., & Rosengard, P. (1999). Effects of health-related physical education on academic achievement: project SPARK. Research quarterly for exercise and sport, 70(2), 127–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/02701367.1999.10608030

Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S. W., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science (New York, N.Y.), 277(5328), 918–924. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.277.5328.918

Weiss, C. C., Purciel, M., Bader, M., Quinn, J. W., Lovasi, G., Lovasi, K. M., & Rundle, A. G. (2011). Reconsidering access: park facilities and neighborhood disamenities in New York City. Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 88(2), 297–310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-011-9551-z

Wilson, J. Q., & Kelling, G. L. (1982). Broken windows. Atlantic monthly, 249(3), 29-38.

Cite this article (APA)

Trivedi, C. (2020, February 11). Visualizing effect of lack of physical activity for children. ConceptsHacked. Retrieved from https://conceptshacked.com/visualizing-effect-of-lack-of-physical-activity-for-children