Diverse school community engagement with the North Carolina active routes to school project: a diffusion study.

Background: Schools located in rural parts of the United States and North Carolina have benefited proportionally less from the federal Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program than their more urban counterparts. We investigated whether and how diverse elementary and middle school communities throughout North Carolina have engaged in a SRTS-inspired, multi-sectoral initiative called the Active Routes to School (ARTS) project over the course of 5 years (2013 through 2017).

Methods: Analyses included a study sample of 2602 elementary and middle schools in North Carolina, 853 that participated in the ARTS project over the five-year study period and 1749 that had not.

Cost-effectiveness of Community-Based Minigrants to Increase Physical Activity in Youth.

Context: American youth are insufficiently active, and minigrant programs have been developed to facilitate implementation of evidence-based interventions in communities. However, little is known about the cost-effectiveness of targeted minigrant programs for the implementation of physical activity (PA) promoting strategies for youth.

Objective: To determine the cost-effectiveness of a minigrant program to increase PA among youth.

Effectiveness of Community-Based Minigrants to Increase Physical Activity and Decrease Sedentary Time in Youth.

Objective: To determine the effectiveness of targeted grant funding for the implementation of multilevel community interventions to increase moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and decrease time spent sedentary among a large sample of youth in North Carolina.

Design: A repeated, cross-sectional, group-randomized controlled trial design with a delayed treatment group.

Setting: Twenty counties in North Carolina.

Comparison of objectively measured physical activity levels of rural, suburban, and urban youth.

Background: Nationally, youth are generally not achieving 60 minutes of daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Studies suggest that rural adults are less active than their urban counterparts, although studies of children are equivocal.

Purpose: To compare objectively measured physical activity across the rural-urban continuum in a sample of fourth- to eighth-grade youth.

Sex moderates associations between perceptions of the physical and social environments and physical activity in youth.

Purpose: To determine if the sex of the child moderates the relationships between perceptions of the physical/social environments and moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in youth.

Design: Cross-sectional.

Setting: North Carolina.

Characteristics of successful community partnerships to promote physical activity among young people, North Carolina, 2010-2012.

Introduction: Success of community-based projects has been thought to hinge on the strength of partnerships between those involved in design and implementation. However, characteristics of successful partnerships have not been fully described, particularly in the context of community-based physical activity promotion. We sought to identify characteristics of successful partnerships from the perspective of project coordinators involved in a mini-grant program to promote physical activity among young people.

Day of the week is associated with meeting physical activity recommendations and engaging in excessive sedentary time in youth.

Background: Most youth fail to achieve 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) daily while engaging in excessive amounts of sedentary behaviors. The objective of this investigation was to identify modifiable factors associated with meeting MVPA recommendations or engaging in greater than 55% of observed time sedentary.

Methods: Youth (N = 1005, 10.

Lessons learned from a collaborative field-based collection of physical activity data using accelerometers.

Context: Recent improvements in the accuracy and availability of accelerometers present an opportunity to increase the validity of physical activity assessment. While use of these devices is now pervasive among researchers, accelerometers have not been widely used by community-based public health practitioners.

Objective: To present a case example of field-based data collection using accelerometers with youth.