Active project to break down barriers for teens
It’s common knowledge that many children spend more time playing computer games and watching TV than being active. But a new project by Swansea University is empowering children in the city to get fit and improve their heart health...
The secret to keeping teenagers fit and healthy is simple – give them a chance to do activities they enjoy with their friends.
Now a groundbreaking Swansea University project which investigated the issue is pressing ahead with plans to make a life-changing difference for young people.
They are seeking funding to provide practical community-based alternatives that will help teenagers ditch their remote controllers and gadgets and get moving instead.
The Active project worked with more than 900 teenagers from seven secondary schools across Swansea to find out what were the barriers that discouraged them from taking exercise and what could be done to help them engage in more sporting activity.
The project, funded by the British Heart Foundation Cymru which has a research base at the Medical School in Swansea, aimed to see whether giving teenagers vouchers to spend on activities of their choice would reduce the time they spent being sedentary, improve fitness, lower the risk of heart disease and improve general health.
The participants could do any activity such as dancing, swimming, karate, skateboarding or BMXing – all that mattered was that they kept moving.
They were also provided with peer mentoring to give them social support to be active with a specialist worker also on hand to help the teenagers find out what was available already.
Michaela James, trial manager for the Active project, said: “We started by asking them what would make them more active. They told us that accessibility and lack of opportunities to try new activities – ones that were social and informal rather than traditional sports – were barriers to them being active.
“The idea was to empower them to be able to access the activities they wanted to do.”
The research gave the teenagers the chance to make their own recommendations about the kinds of activities they wanted and these included:
■ Lowering the cost of activities or ideally making more free ones available;
■ Keeping things local – removing the need to travel to venues;
■ Improving the standards of existing facilities especially in places like parks where equipment is often broken or neglected;
■ Making activities more specific to teenagers, something they felt particularly applied to council-run services;
■ Providing activities girls enjoy too – teenage girls who took part said they would prefer to stay inactive rather than do something they didn’t like.
The social element was clearly a key driver to encouraging youngsters towards activities.
“You’re more confident when you do it with your friends as well,” said one girl who took part.
Another added: “It was fun and enjoyable at the same time so you didn’t really realise you were exercising.”
Michaela added: “Having analysed the outcome of our work one of the key findings was, given the choice, many teenagers prefer something fun, unstructured and social over traditional sports.
“When allowed to decide what they wanted to do all of our participants were in favour of informal activities.”
The study identified ways that may help alter the trend of declining fitness in teenagers, particularly for girls.
Girls in the intervention showed a trend to become fitter (3% more children were fit) and the girls in the control became less fit (7.5% more children were unfit).
The number of pupils categorised as having high blood pressure in the intervention fell from 5.3% to 2.7%.
When it came to the activities the participants chose themselves, trampolining was particularly popular and accounted for almost half of the vouchers used (49%), followed by laser tag (11%) and waterpark visits (7%) with boys and girls opting to do similar activities.
Michaela added: “It is clear that what is currently available for teenagers is not meeting their wants and needs.
“We now want to address this by giving them a voice.”
And the youngsters involved were keen to take advantage of the unique opportunity the year-long study presented.
“When I heard of the Active Project I was quite shocked because opportunities like this don’t come around very often,” said one teenager.
Physical inactivity is one of the most important issues in public health today, with heart and circulatory disease killing around one in four people in the UK. It has been linked to health issues later in life and is considered a key contributor to increased obesity.
There are growing concerns that these young people are spending increasing amounts of time on sedentary activities including watching television, using a computer and playing video games.
However, the Active project’s results show teenagers have strong views on physical activity and want a say on what will work for them.
Though the data gathering element of the project has now been completed, its work still goes on.
Michaela explained the next step is to apply for funding that will enable her and her colleagues to bridge the gap between the findings and how they can be put in to practice in the community.
“It is not simply a case of making teenagers more aware of what they can access, they need to be able to access it easily and it needs to be something they actually want to do.
“It is not just a case of setting up sports teams.”
She added: “Working with young people instead of acting for them could be the change needed to get them more active in school and the community.
“Our study suggests a top-down approach does not work and all the evidence shows prescriptive, formal sport is not the answer.
“To stop the decline in physical activity in the teenage years, the first priority should be talking to teenagers.”
The head of the Medical School, Professor Keith Lloyd, welcomed the progress the Active project is making. He said: “We are delighted our collaboration with the British Heart Foundation here at Swansea University Medical School is having an impact in such an important area. We are committed to helping make a real difference to the lives of young people in Wales, and beyond.”
Now one of the Active project’s key objectives is to strengthen community cohesion and improve the ways in which teens are not only perceived but also use the spaces themselves.
Michaela added: “The youngsters have told us what they need so we really want to act on that and give them the opportunity to be active and healthy – not just through their adolescence but for the rest of their lives.
“This really could make a life-saving difference to them.”