Preventing Childhood Obesity - Evidence Policy and Practice.pdf

Chapter 22
The benefits lost are substantial — active transport not
only increases physical activity but also provides children
with knowledge of their neighborhoods, and has
positive impacts on their behavioral and cognitive
development, instilling significant social, physical and
mental competencies.
VicHealth ’ s “ Streets Ahead ” approach will enable
children to become more active in their neighborhoods.
The initiative aims to help communities to
create supportive environments that enhance children
’ s active transport not only to and from school
but throughout other aspects of their community life
(e.g., walking to the home of a friend in the neighborhood).
The initiative is designed to be implemented
on a place - based community level within targeted
neighborhoods of a local government municipality.
This initiative (implemented in July 2008) was
informed by evidence from the Walking School Bus
project in Victoria, Australia and other research findings,
which identified the benefits of increased active
transport for children becoming community led.
Initially, the initiative will require the leadership
of local council senior staff and a project steering
group. From this, schools and local communities
(children, parents, relevant groups/organizations) will
be engaged to form their own groups to develop strategies
that would work best within their communities
to increase modes of transport. A key anticipated
outcome of this project is the development of strategies
that are locally driven but use knowledge translation
processes to engage researchers, funding bodies,
local governments and communities. The learning
from these locally driven initiatives will then inform
the knowledge translation and exchange process and
guide further action.
Conclusion
Activities to support KTE are important in all areas
of public health but are particularly pertinent in an
area such as childhood obesity where solutions
to problems need to be addressed through partnerships
incorporating communities, decision makers,
researchers and practitioners. This necessitates the use
of different types of knowledge: implicit and explicit.
This chapter has outlined some of the core components
of KTE and outlined some tools which are
intended to support KTE activities in a range of set-
tings. A number of strategies exist, which may help to
facilitate the exchange of knowledge needed to address
childhood obesity. As the field of KTE continues to
develop, it will be important for all stakeholders to
reflect on these strategies — whether they are working,
how they are working, in what circumstances and
what factors are needed to facilitate these processes.
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