Partnerships for Active Children in Elementary Schools: Outcomes of a 2-Year Pilot Study to Increase Physical Activity During the School Day.

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of the pilot study Partnerships for Active Children in Elementary Schools on the percentage of children achieving the Institute of Medicine guideline of 30 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) during the school day.

Design: Pre/multiple post-quasi-experimental.

Setting: Four elementary schools.

Participants: Physical education (n = 3) and classroom teachers (n = 12) and students (n = 229).

Intervention: Partnerships for Active Children in Elementary Schools was a multicomponent, theory-driven intervention facilitated through school-university partnerships. Intervention approaches included communities of practice, community-based participatory research, and service learning.

Measures: Accelerometer-derived percentage of children accumulating 30 minutes of MVPA during the school day.

Analysis: Multilevel mixed-effects regression estimated MVPA differences over time.

Results: Compared to control, a 2.4% (95% confidence interval [CI]: -0.0% to 4.8%) and 8.8% (95% CI: -0.3% to 15.4%) increase in the percentage of time girls and boys engaged in MVPA during the school day was observed. The percentage of boys and girls in the intervention group achieving 30 minutes of MVPA/day increased from 57.5% to 70.7% and 35.4% to 56.9%, respectively. Boys and girls in the control group decreased from 61.5% to 56.4% and 52.6% to 41.9%, respectively. However, these changes did not reach statistical significance.

Conclusion: Partnerships for Active Children in Elementary Schools demonstrated meaningful impact on children's MVPA during the school day by increasing boys' and girls' MVPA. However, additional strategies may be required to help schools achieve the Institute of Medicine guideline.