Walking

Why walking to school is better than driving for your kids

sgupta — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 13:52:09 +0000

Why walking to school is better than driving for your kids sgupta Fri, 09/11/2015 - 09:52

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Children who walk to school have been found to have higher academic performance, says George Mammen

Valerie Iancovich

Author legacy

Valerie Iancovich

Back to School

Children

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Features

Health

Walking

Subheadline

U of T researcher on the importance of fresh air, exercise and a lower risk of accident or injury

With the start of a new school year comes the opportunity to establish new, healthy routines.

But statistics show the vast majority of school-aged kids still aren’t getting enough physical activity – only five per cent of children and youth in Canada between the ages of five and 19 reach the daily minimum of 12,000 steps.

Adding a walk to and from school is a simple way to help reverse this trend, says George Mammen, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto.

Mammen has worked closely with Professor Guy Faulkner and conducted extensive analysis of active transportation – including his most recent publication, Putting school travel on the map. And Mammen's work on how walking as little as 20 minutes a day can help stave off depression made headlines around world. (Read more about depression and walking.)

Below, Mammen dispels some myths and fears about the walk to school and explains the many advantages of taking the car out of the morning commute.

What are the biggest misconceptions about walking to school?

To be more ‘protective,’ parents often think it is safer to drive their children to school rather than letting them walk. In reality, evidence shows that children are more likely to be harmed in a car accident compared to walking to school.

How do you respond when parents say they are concerned about strangers and traffic?

Research shows that children are at a higher risk of injury when being driven compared to walking to school. I would suggest families get to know their neighbours with children attending the same school and create ‘walking groups’ or ‘walking buddies’. This would help limit parents’ fears around active school travel, create a stronger sense of community and ensure that everyone feels confident about the new routine.

What are the mental health benefits of walking to school?

Children who walk to school have been found to have higher academic performance in terms of attention/alertness, verbal, numeric, and reasoning abilities; higher degree of pleasantness and lower levels of stress during the school day; and higher levels of happiness, excitement and relaxation on the journey to school. Walking to school can further foster personal growth by developing a sense of independent decision making, emotional bonds with peers and the natural environment, and road and traffic safety skills.

What about the physical benefits?

Active travel is one source of physical activity and with more physical activity comes increased metabolism, improved cardiorespiratory fitness, and lower weight and BMI.

Is there an ideal distance children should walk to reap the benefits? Or is there a distance that is too far?

Research has shown that living greater than 1.6 km from school was deemed ‘too far to walk.’ However, it's important to remember that any minute you walk is contributing to the daily guidelines for physical activity in children (i.e., 60 minutes). When walking to and from school, you can accumulate between 15-45 minutes of your daily physical activity.

How is the walk to school linked with other unstructured physical activity, such as riding a bike or playing at the park?

Compared to children who are driven to school, children who walk are found to be more active overall through other physical activity sources such as organized sport and unstructured ‘active play’.

You’ve reviewed research that analyzes the walk to school in various countries and cultures. What are some of the trends you’ve observed?

Over the last five decades, there has been decline in the number of children walking to school in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Vietnam, Brazil, the UK and US. This is why this research topic is so important – to reverse these trends globally and help increase this very important source of physical activity.

What are some of the real barriers to parents allowing their children to walk to school?

Among the families who live within a ‘walkable’ distance from school, parents typically identify safety and time issues as main barriers. I would suggest that parents let their children walk with friends. I would also advise making small changes to their schedules like heading to bed and waking up a bit earlier than usual to make time for this very important part of their days.

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Kid-friendly cities: the importance of walking to school

sgupta — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 07:26:34 +0000

Kid-friendly cities: the importance of walking to school sgupta Mon, 11/25/2013 - 02:26

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Walking to school allows children to explore and interact with their environment in important ways, says transport geographer Ron Buliung of UTM (photo by John Hryniuk)

Jenny Hall

Author legacy

Jenny Hall

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research

Walking

Features

Do you let your kids walk by themselves to school? If not, Ron Buliung of the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto Mississauga wants to know why.

Buliung is a transport geographer who examines the relationship between children and cities, with a particular focus on how kids get around.

“I’m interested in children, mobility, activity and health,” he says, noting that some of the decisions adults make about children’s lives relate to the politics, design and structure of cities — from political decisions about user fees for city-run programs to the layout of our roads and decisions regarding speed limits — and are informed by their beliefs about whether children are capable of navigating the city alone.

Children, however, might have a very different way of looking at things. Consider the journey to school, something Buliung and colleagues have spent a lot of time thinking about.

Today, employment is located all over the region, and many households contain two working adults. Parents, in this context, may tend to think of the trip to school as something to get over with as quickly as possible. But when you talk to children, it turns out they consider the journey a place in and of itself.

“It’s a place where children, particularly children who are walking, experience the environment in important ways,” he says. “They play games on the fly and socialize.They told us about puddles that freeze over in winter and allow them to slide across.

"These are moments that adults don’t think about as being important, but it’s all physical activity and learning that can have positive feedback on a child’s health.”

This study was part of the BEAT project, which Buliung works on with colleagues Guy Faulkner and Caroline Fusco from U of T’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education.

Another study, in which the researchers partnered with Metrolinx, the Greater Toronto Area’s transportation planning body, involved working with schools and communities to increase the use of active modes of transportation — mainly walking and biking. Yet another tracked children’s activities and modes of transportation, and measured this against their height and weight.

One of the barriers working against active modes of transportation is fear of strangers.

“It’s a very real fear,” says Buliung, who has young children of his own. Yet, he says, “another way to conceptualize strangers is as community. We don’t know everyone around us and so those whom we don’t know, strictly speaking, could be considered strangers as well. Yet most strangers are not interested in harming our children.”

Statistics bear this out. The RCMP reported only five true stranger abductions over a two-year period from 2000-2001. By contrast, traffic injuries are the leading cause of child death in Canada. In 2010, 61 children died and 9,000 were injured.

“The driving parent, who means well, is more likely, statistically speaking, to harm a child than are strangers,” says Buliung. Nevertheless, he notes, stranger abduction can result in a fatality so there is a strong basis for parents to fear such events even though they are infrequent.

Most of us think of urban planning as something that changes the way the city is. While Buliung wants to influence policy so that we can make cities better for children and youth, he is also trying to influence the way we think about cities and transportation. If we can get children walking and biking early, he says, this experience might translate into a lifetime of travel choices that are good for each other, the environment, the economy and our health.

His ultimate goal? To give a voice to children.

“They’re easy to forget about. Where is the voice of the child in city policy?”

Jenny Hall is a writer with U of T's research and innovation magazine, Edge, where this story originally appeared; to see more Edge stories go to http://www.research.utoronto.ca/edge/fall2013/.

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To prevent depression: walk 20 minutes a day

sgupta — Mon, 28 Oct 2013 11:03:29 +0000

To prevent depression: walk 20 minutes a day sgupta Mon, 10/28/2013 - 07:03

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Mild exercise such as walking or gardening is good for mental as well as physical health, research shows (photo by Johan Appelgren via Flickr)

Valerie Iancovich

Author legacy

Valerie Iancovich

Topic

Breaking Research

Kinesiology

Research

The importance of the walk to school: experts

sgupta — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:36:51 +0000

The importance of the walk to school: experts sgupta Mon, 12/10/2012 - 05:36

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Children who live within two kilometres of school are still likely to walk, says Professor Guy Faulkner (Thinkstock photo)

Althea Blackburn-Evans

Author legacy

Althea Blackburn-Evans

Topic

“Walking to school is not dead,” proclaimed Professor Guy Faulkner, as he led a multidisciplinary panel of experts through a public symposium, What Happened to Walking? Encouraging Active School Travel in Toronto.

While Toronto has seen about a 10 per cent decline in the past 20 years, kids who live within one or two kilometres of school are still quite likely to walk, Faulkner told the audience at the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education.

But sprawling city neighbourhoods and perceptions of safety are among the factors that make the trip by foot more difficult, he said.

Faulkner (pictured below left) and colleagues Ron Buliung and Caroline Fusco, who presented highlights of their multi-year study on active school travel, were joined by chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat and Toronto Star architecture critic and urban affairs columnist Christopher Hume for a discussion about walking to school and how to create an environment more conducive to active travel.

Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada, the study comes at a time when children are heavier, weaker and less physically-active than they were just five years ago. And results show girls make the trip by foot less often than boys.

Buliung, a professor of geography at University of Toronto Mississauga, shared adults’ and children’s perspective on safety, which uncovered gender differences and disparities between kids' and parents' fears.

In terms of personal safety, strangers are the biggest fear for parents while their kids seem more concerned about bullies and dogs. But girls consider strangers a threat far more than boys do. And when it comes to traffic safety, both parents and children agree that street crossings are the biggest worry, while parents also factor in cars around the school and the maturity level of their kids.

Professor Fusco (pictured right) shared the stories of the children themselves, who in addition to being interviewed were asked to take photos of their commute to school. These “photo-voice interviews” highlighted the pros and cons of walking to school, but the most compelling stories were the ones kids told about the benefits beyond physical activity.

One 10-year-old child marvelled at the opportunity to enjoy some small wonders along the way:

“There’s this pathway I go by, and it’s actually in this puny, puny forest. So it has big tall trees around it. Yeah, it’s just spectacular.”

Just months into her role at Toronto’s new chief planner, Keesmaat admitted that in recent years “we’ve designed children out of public space” and says we need to make walking a fundamental part of transportation planning. A passionate advocate for “walking habitats,” Keesmaat identified some great examples in downtown Toronto – where sidewalks include treed boulevards, street-side café culture abounds, and cyclists and transit vehicles share a safe transportation infrastructure. All of these things make walking safer and more enjoyable.

Keesmaat said that under her leadership this model is becoming the gold standard for infrastructure renewal and new neighbourhood planning, adding: “We’re pursuing this pretty aggressively in the city.”

Hume made an impassioned case for the importance of walking in Toronto, insisting that, “Walking is a reflection of how we feel about the environment in which we live.” He marvelled at the need to make a case for the importance of what he called “the most basic human activity” and didn’t pull any punches when it came to Mayor Ford and his infamous statement that, “The war on the car is over.”

Before leading the question-and-answer period, Hume summed up the car travel conundrum: “We live according to the need for convenience. But convenience isn’t really that convenient; we can’t afford it anymore.”

Attended by more than 200 people, the symposium was the fourth in a series of free lectures hosted by the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education to share its diverse areas of research with the broader public. To learn more about the research presented at this symposium, visit the BEAT Project website.

At this time of year, with the snow threatening to fly, the researchers stressed their results also showed that winter does not present a problem for walking to school.

“There’s no such thing as bad weather,” said Faulkner. “Just bad clothing choices.”

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When real-world exercise makes your avatar stronger

sgupta — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:33:23 +0000

When real-world exercise makes your avatar stronger sgupta Fri, 11/16/2012 - 06:33

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When exercise gave their online avatars a boost, sedentary girls picked up the pace, researchers found (Bigstock photo)

Valerie Iancovich

Author legacy

Valerie Iancovich

Topic

Exercise gives mental health a boost

sgupta — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:37:37 +0000

Exercise gives mental health a boost sgupta Wed, 10/12/2011 - 05:37

Cutline

Yoga and other forms of exercise can help relieve stress and reduce the risk of mental health. (photo by Pascal Paquette)

Anjum Nayyar

Author legacy

Anjum Nayyar

Topic

Subheadline

Professor Guy Faulkner calls it win-win strategy

While most people know physical exercise helps them in losing weight or achieving better physical health, perhaps less well known is the extensive evidence concluding that exercise also benefits mental health. Professor Guy Faulkner, associate professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Health, says improved mental health is one of exercise’s biggest benefits, something that’s worth emphasizing during Mental Health Awareness Month.

He says there’s a growing evidence base demonstrating that being physically active can play a preventive role in reducing the risk of mental health problems and it can promote mental health. For example, physical activity has been shown to improve sleep, increase feelings of well-being and reduce stress. Faulkner has conducted physical activity research with staff at the University of Toronto and with students.

“When it comes to students we are interested in those coming into first year. When people are thrust into a new environment there tends to be a reduction in physical activity. We‘re looking at ways to help students maintain levels of physical activity before the decline starts,” he said. “People often say they don’t have time because they’re trying to focus on their studies, but the time they spend being physically active, they’re more likely to study more effectively and they’re academically performing better as well.

“We’ve published research examining a cross-section of U of T students’ physical activity through a survey from health services and the data shows that people who are more physically active are self-reporting better grades.”

In terms of staff, Faulkner conducted a web-based intervention using pedometers called Walk@Work in the winter of 2010. In addition to significant increases in steps over the twelve week program, staff who increased their steps also reported higher levels of vitality at the end of the study.

Faulkner describes physical activity as a ‘win-win’ strategy for health promotion. The physical health benefits of physical activity are indisputable. Yet physical activity may also provide mental health benefits for many.

Faulkner offers some tips to those on campus for increasing their physical activity.

“There is growing concern around prolonged sitting. Try to break up the time spent sitting. If you find you do spend a lot of time sitting at a desk, try to break that up and get up and move every hour for five minutes. It’s also about incorporating brisk walks into the day, roughly 100 steps per minute for 10 minutes. You’ve got plan it like you plan your classes, schedule it in.”

He adds just incorporating this routine for 30 minutes a day will improve physical and mental health.

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