Developing a simple tool for screening the health and motor performance-related fitness of children.

Abstract

The health and fitness of Australian children, including the onset of overweight and obesity, largely as a result of increasing sedentary behaviour, decreasing physical activity and poor dietary intake, can and will impact on Australia’s future health, education, economic and social prosperity. It is therefore important to enhance opportunities for Australia’s children to be physically active and as fit and as healthy as possible. Although much attention has been given to healthy eating and increasing physical activity in order to maintain or improve the health and wellbeing of Australian children, little attention has been given to motor proficiency as a determinant of physical activity in children. It is proposed that in order to curtail the current levels of child overweight and obesity, children must develop adequate motor proficiency and cardiorespiratory fitness, as these two attributes will likely enhance a child’s ability to participate in age-appropriate physical activity. It is therefore essential to develop systems and tools that will identify early, those children who have poor health-related fitness with motor incompetency as a possible contributing factor. This thesis aimed to develop a simple tool for accurately screening the health and motor performance-related fitness of children to guide the referral process to physiotherapy for early intervention of motor incompetency.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English
Supervisor	Wayne Hing (Supervisor), Gary M. Leong (Supervisor) & Roger Hughes (Supervisor)