Morelife Physical Activity Club: An Adventure Therapy-Based Approach to Tackle Childhood Obesity
Morelife Physical Activity Club: An Adventure Therapy-Based Approach to Tackle Childhood Obesity
Dr AB Sirin-Ayva, Emma Nicholls, Grace Shiplee, Dr Sophie Edwards, Prof Paul Gately
Introduction
Today, nearly a third of children aged 2 to 15 are living with overweight or obesity. Living with obesity also has an impact on mental health.
Morelife UK delivers tailor-made, evidence-based and psychologically informed health improvement programmes to individuals and families.
However, attendance at a weight management programme is an ongoing issue for children and young people and their families. Parents can be reluctant to attend these programmes due to the fear of stigmatisation and discrimination towards obesity. Often these weight management programmes are labelled as ‘fat club’ by other kids.
Morelife created a unique weight management programme for children and young people. This programme is designed based on Adventure Therapy (Experiential Learning) and storytelling approaches to improve their wellbeing and tackle discrimination towards obesity. The programme aims to help children living with obesity to pursue a healthy lifestyle while managing their weight.
Methods
The programme is aimed at children living with obesity and their families. It has 10 weekly sessions to cover obesity-related topics, such as nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and stress via adventure therapy activities. There is also complementary parental intervention such as family webinars, online meetings, and digital programmes.
Morelife created a Healthy Behaviours Questionnaire to monitor nutrition, screen time and sleep and stress. The questionnaire has 3 subscales (Nutrition: 12 questions, Screen Time: 3 questions, Sleep: 6 questions) 21 questions in total with visual aids to make it more engaging for children and young people. We implemented this questionnaire to monitor healthy behaviours before and after the programme.
Results
37 children and 30 parents completed the pre and post Healthy Behaviour Questionnaire. Some of the results are shared below:
The number of children who have stated that they do not like eating new fruits and vegetables has significantly decreased from 6 in the pre-programme questionnaire to 1 in the post-programme questionnaire. The percentage of children who are eating three or more portions of fruit and vegetables per day has increased from less than a third (32%) to more than half (51%).
The percentage of parents who think their children know what a balanced diet is has increased from less than 50% to over 80% after completing the programme.
87% of the parents think that their children have become more aware of what a balanced diet looks like since starting the programme.
The most common changes made at home to help them eat a balanced diet were more fruits and vegetables, reduced sugar and smaller portions.
No significant changes or reductions in screen time rated by children, but there is more requirement for activities and parents are finding ways to help their children be more active.
Conclusion
Morelife PA club is effective on improving nutrition, physical activity and sleep. Further data is required to analyse long term effects of this programme.