{"id":8035,"date":"2016-12-19T12:16:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T10:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/?p=8035"},"modified":"2016-12-19T12:16:55","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T10:16:55","slug":"school-day-physical-activity-of-school-children-in-estonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/school-day-physical-activity-of-school-children-in-estonia\/","title":{"rendered":"School-day physical activity of school-children in Estonia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Background and aims.<\/strong> There is ample evidence that physical activity is necessary for children`s physical and mental health and supports academic achievements. At the same time, increasing sedentary behaviour and decreasing physical activity levels of children are a serious concern for many developed countries. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the physical activity levels and sedentary time of primary school children in diferent school-day segments.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Methods.<\/strong> Randomly selected 13 schools al l over Estonia participated in a study conducted from December 2014 to May 2015. All students from the first school level (grades 1 and 2) and second school level (grades 4 and 5) were asked to participate. Physical activity was measured for a subgroup of consented students, using accelerometry. The beginning and end times of different school-day segments were based on the diaries, filled in by the students, and on school timetables.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Results.<\/strong> Only 29.3% and 17.5% of the students of the first and second school levels, respectively, met physical activity recommendations (p = 0.003). The students of the second school level spent a higher proportion of awake hours as sedentary compared to students from the first school level (62.7% and 54.8%, respectively, p &lt; 0.001). In-school moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) contributed to almost a quarter of daily MVPA (school level I, 23.6%; school level II, 28.5%), with an important input from physical education. Almost a third of the lesson of physical education was spent in MVPA while another third was spent as sedentary (28.3% and 29.5%, respectively).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion.<\/strong> Although school MVPA contributes significantly to the overall physical activity of students, the levels of physical activity are low. Consequently, there is a need for an evidence-based interventions aimed to increase the levels of physical activity and to decrease the sedentary time of school-children throughout the school day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Background and aims. There is ample evidence that physical activity is necessary for children`s physical and mental health and supports academic achievements. At the same time, increasing sedentary behaviour and decreasing physical activity levels of children are a serious concern for many developed countries. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the physical &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1540],"class_list":["post-8035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8036,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8035\/revisions\/8036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eestiarst.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}