The Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth: Implications for practitioners, professionals, and organizations

Abstract

Abstract:The new Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth emphasize the integration of all movement behaviours that occur over a whole day (i.e., light, moderate, and vigorous physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep). These guidelines shift the paradigm away from considering each behaviour in isolation. This concept of the "whole day matters" not only calls for a change in thinking about movement but also for redevelopment of dissemination and implementation practice. Past guideline launch activities largely have aimed to create awareness through passive dissemination strategies (e.g., Website posts, distribution of print resources). For the integrated guidelines to have public health impact, we must move beyond dissemination and raising of awareness to implementation and behaviour change. Shifting this focus requires new, innovative approaches to intervention, including interdisciplinary collaboration, policy change, and refocused service provision. The purpose of this paper is to identify practitioners, professionals, and organizations with potential to disseminate and/or implement the guidelines, discuss possible implementation strategies for each of these groups, and describe the few resources being developed and those needed to support dissemination and implementation efforts. This discussion makes readily apparent the need for a well-funded, comprehensive, long-term dissemination, implementation, and evaluation plan to ensure uptake and activation of the guidelines.

Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years (0–4 years): An Integration of Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour, and Sleep

“…In order to motivate adoption, the new guidelines should be followed up with messages that explain the “why” and “how” to the various stakeholder groups, as well as sustained implementation and activation strategies [ 1 , 57 , 67 ]. The suite of prepared messaging and communication tools, adapted visual identity, and digital platform are designed to serve as a foundation for a long-term, multi-platform, multi-sector, multi-jurisdictional, and multi-disciplinary marketing and communication efforts to facilitate uptake and activation of the new guidelines.…”

“…The release of the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth [ 1 ] marked the initiation of a paradigm shift away from consideration of isolated behaviours towards a “whole-day matters” approach. This shift created opportunity for the redevelopment of guideline dissemination and implementation practices [ 57 ]. In addition to traditional passive dissemination strategies (e.g., website posts, distribution of print resources), additional efforts were made to implement and activate the child and youth guidelines.…”

Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth: An Integration of Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour, and Sleep

“…The preamble and guidelines in this form are intended for practitioners, professionals, stakeholders and researchers. Supplementary "user-friendly" messaging materials, as outlined in the Dissemination, implementation, and evaluation plans section of the Results, and in the paper by Latimer-Cheung et al (2016), are in development for the general public. Developmental-framed messages (e.g., promotion of physical literacy) instead of risk-framed messages (e.g., related to health) will be particularly important for communications directly targeted to youth.…”

Cross‐sectional and prospective associations of meeting 24‐h movement guidelines with overweight and obesity in preschool children

“…Whether meeting the 24‐h movement guidelines or not is prospectively associated with childhood obesity is unclear. Thus far, published studies only report cross‐sectional associations between meeting the 24‐h guidelines and lower prevalence of obesity . However, the cross‐sectional design limits understanding of the direction of effect between meeting the 24‐h guidelines and childhood obesity.…”