B-Proact1v, established in 2012 with an earlier grant from the BHF, collected data from 1,456 Year 1 children (5-6 years) and their parents in Bristol, Bath and North Somerset. Analysis showed that many children spend too much time being sedentary and viewing screens (watching TV, playing games consoles, surfing the internet) for healthy development.

The new grant of £538,000 enables the team (composed of members of Bristol’s School for Policy Studies and School of Social and Community Medicine, along with members of Birmingham’s School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences) to return to the same schools to see how active the children are when they are in Year 4 (8-9 years) and Year 6 (10-11 years).

This stage of the project, led by Professor Russ Jago from Bristol’s Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences, will focus on identifying the things that parents do to help their children become more physically active. This information will then be used to develop strategies that enable parents to encourage their children to be as active as possible.