The promotion of children's health and wellbeing:the contributions of England's charity sector

Background. Sports and arts based services for children have positive impacts on their mental and physical health. The charity sector provides such services, often set up in response to local communities expressing a need. The present study maps resilience promoting services provided by children's charities in England. Specifically, the prominence of sports and arts activities, and types of mental health provisions including telephone help-lines, are investigated. Findings. The study was a cross-sectional web-based survey of chief executives, senior mangers, directors and chairs of charities providing services for children under the age of 16. The aims, objectives and activities of participating children's charities and those providing mental health services were described overall. In total 167 chief executives, senior managers, directors and chairs of charities in England agreed to complete the survey. From our sample of charities, arts activities were the most frequently provided services (58/167, 35%), followed by counselling (55/167, 33%) and sports activities (36/167, 22%). Only 13% (22/167) of charities expected their work to contribute to the health legacy of the 2012 London Olympics. Telephone help lines were provided by 16% of the charities that promote mental health. Conclusions. Counselling and arts activities were relatively common. Sports activities were limited despite the evidence base that sport and physical activity are effective interventions for well-being and health gain. Few of the charities we surveyed expected a health legacy from the 2012 London Olympics

The (cost-)effectiveness of an individually tailored long-term worksite health promotion programme on physical activity and nutrition: design of a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of disability and mortality in most Western countries. The prevalence of several risk factors, most notably low physical activity and poor nutrition, is very high. Therefore, lifestyle behaviour changes are of great importance. The worksite offers an efficient structure to reach large groups and to make use of a natural social network. This study investigates a worksite health promotion programme with individually tailored advice in physical activity and nutrition and individual counselling to increase compliance with lifestyle recommendations and sustainability of a healthy lifestyle. METHODS: The study is a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial with the worksite as the unit of randomisation. All workers will receive a standard worksite health promotion program. Additionally, the intervention group will receive access to an individual Health Portal consisting of four critical features: a computer-tailored advice, a monitoring function, a personal coach, and opportunities to contact professionals at request. Participants are employees working for companies in the Netherlands, being literate enou

Cardiometabolic results from an armband-based weight loss trial

John C Sieverdes, Xuemei Sui, Gregory A Hand, Vaughn W Barry, Sara Wilcox, Rebecca A Meriwether, James W Hardin, Amanda C McClain, Steven N BlairDepartment of Exercise Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USAPurpose: This report examines the blood chemistry and blood pressure (BP) results from the Lifestyle Education for Activity and Nutrition (LEAN) study, a randomized weight loss trial. A primary purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of real-time self-monitoring of energy balance (using the SenseWearTM Armband, BodyMedia, Inc Pittsburgh, PA) on these health factors.Methods: 164 sedentary overweight or obese adults (46.8 ± 10.8 years; BMI 33.3 ± 5.2 kg/m2; 80% women) took part in the 9-month study. Participants were randomized into 4 conditions: a standard care condition with an evidence-based weight loss manual (n = 40), a group-based behavioral weight loss program (n = 44), an armband alone condition (n = 41), and a group plus armband (n = 39) condition. BP, fasting blood lipids and glucose were measured at baseline and 9 months.Results: 99 participants (60%) completed both baseline and follow-up measurements for BP and blood chemistry analysis. Missing data were handled by baseline carried forward. None of the intervention groups had significant changes in blood lipids or BP when compared to standard care after adjustment for covariates, though within-group lowering was found for systolic BP in group and group + armband conditions, a rise in total cholesterol and LDL were found in standard care and group conditions, and a lowering of triglycerides was found in the two armband conditions. Compared with the standard care condition, fasting glucose decreased significantly for participants in the group, armband, and group + armband conditions (all P < 0.05), respectively.Conclusion: Our results suggest that using an armband program is an effective strategy to decrease fasting blood glucose. This indicates that devices, such as the armband, can be a successful way to disseminate programs that can improve health risk factors. This can be accomplished without group-based behavioral programs, thereby potentially reducing costs.Keywords: armband, energy balance, randomized controlled trial, physical activity, blood lipids, blood glucos

Social Media Policies in Intercollegiate Athletics: The Speech and Privacy Rights of Student-Athletes

Focusing on the issue of institutional control versus student-athlete rights as students, this paper examines the regulation of student-athletes' social media usage by athletic departments. A central focus of the paper is the consideration of laws passed in 12 states since 2012 that limit the authority of colleges and universities to monitor students' social media activities, with much of the impetus for these laws motivated by the treatment of the student-athlete population