Grant: Operating Grant: Population Health Intervention Research

Several provinces have responded to the rising prevalence of childhood obesity by enacting school-based policies aimed at increasing physical activity (PA) levels in youth. Remarkably, these school-based policies are being adopted without any evidence suggesting that they work or how they should be implemented. The current proposal is designed to address this need by evaluating the province-wide policy mandating physical education for all secondary students in Manitoba which started in the fall of 2008. The policy itself is mandating physical education from grades 9 through 12 for the first time in Canada. We think that the policy mandating physical education in secondary students will reduce the prevalence of physically inactivity and increase physical activity levels in adolescents in Manitoba. We will measure activity several ways at various time points after the policy and compare these values to data we collected before the policy started. The data that we collect will be the first ever describing how effective a province wide policy can be for increasing physical activity in adolescents.