內文只有英文版
The World Health Organization released an integrated guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep for children under five years in 2018. These guidelines have been adopted for children aged 2 to 6 years in Hong Kong. Funded by the Health and Medical Research Fund – Research Fellowship Scheme, Dr Wendy Huang and her collaborators (Prof John Reilly, University of Strathclyde; Prof Stephen Wong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong) investigated the uptake and impact of these guidelines among parents and teachers using a complementary (quantitative and qualitative) research approach.
Findings of this project highlight the knowledge gap between parents’ and teachers’ perceived and young children’s actual physical activity behaviour. The compliance with the physical activity guidelines was as low as less than 15% among young children, at the same time, only one tenth of the parents had adequate knowledge of the guidelines, which inevitably affect their intention to adopt these recommendations. The feedback from teachers and parents on dissemination of the guidelines underlined the importance of making use of a variety of sources, especially social media, for communication. It also indicated that traditional delivery ways (e.g. brochures) should be supplemented with innovative tools such as infographic or animation.
Supported by the same funding, Dr Huang also had a short-term attachment with the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO) at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. This team has been instrumental in developing the world’s first 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the early years in November 2021. The attachment with the HALO team provided a variety of opportunities to scrutinize the final preparation stage, witness the formal release, and interact with the key team members who developed these guidelines.
Building on the previous success, Dr Huang has been invited to an expert panel to develop an international School-Related Sedentary Behaviour Recommendations for Children and Youth. These recommendations will consider both screen and non-screen-based sedentary behaviours, and will have practical implications for adopting a whole-of-school approach to combatting sedentarism in students. Collaborated with the two international leaders of the recommendation development team as well as local researchers, we will further explore the implementation of these recommendations that is contextualized to reflect local cultures, norms and values.
