Active Healthy Kids Canada prepared and released a Report

Card on the Physical Activity of Children and Youth

every year

between 2005 and 2014 in an effort to “power the movement to

get kids moving” in Canada. This instrument was shown to be very

effective at stimulating efforts to improve childhood physical activ

–

ity

1

and requests were received from many countries to replicate the

Report Card in other jurisdictions. To facilitate this, in 2014 Active

Healthy Kids Canada hosted a

Global Summit on the Physical

Activity of Children

in Toronto, Canada.

2

The Summit welcomed

more than 750 delegates from 32 countries. The highlight of The

Summit was the release of the 10

th

Anniversary Active Healthy

Kids Canada Report Card

3

that compared grades on 9 report card

indicators (overall physical activity; organized sport participation;

active transportation; active play; sedentary behavior; family and

peers; school; community and the build environment; government

strategies and investments) across 15 countries (Australia, Canada,

Colombia, England, Finland, Ghana, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico,

Mozambique, New Zealand, Nigeria, Scotland, South Africa, United

States of America) using a harmonized data gathering and grading

framework.

4,5

The resulting

Global Matrix

provided a compre-

hensive overview of the “state of the nation” of each participating

country, assessing how they were succeeding in providing physical

activity opportunities for children and youth, while also providing

a forum for international comparisons and shared learning.

The Recreovia program provides free physical activity (PA) classes in public spaces in Bogota, Colombia. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the Recreovia program in increasing PA among users of nine parks in Bogota. This study was a natural experiment conducted between 2013 and 2015 in Bogota. Community members and park users living nearby three groups of parks were compared: Group 1 were parks implementing new Recreovias (n=3), Group 2 were control parks (n=3) without Recreovias, and Group 3 were parks with existing Recreovías. Individuals in the “intervention” group were exposed to newly implemented Recreovia programs in parks near their homes. Measurements were collected at baseline and 6-8months after the intervention started. A total of 1533 participants were enrolled in the study: 501 for the existing Recreovias (included in a cross-sectional assessment) and 1032 participants (from the new Recreovias and control parks) included in the cross-sectional and pre-post study. Most participants were low income females. Twenty-three percent of the intervention group started participating in the program. Users of existing Recreovias were significantly more active and less likely to be overweight/obese compared to new Recreovia users at baseline. No changes on PA were found when comparing the intervention and control groups. Recreovias may have potential for increasing PA at the population level in urban areas given their rapid scalability, the higher levels of PA observed among program users, and its potential to reach women, low-income, less educated populations, and the overweight and obese.