Get up, stand up, stand up for your health! Faculty and student perspectives on addressing prolonged sitting in university settings

Abstract

Objective: To assess awareness about prolonged sitting and acceptance of interventions to reduce bouts of prolonged sitting. Participants: Undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and faculty from a large public university. Methods: Eight focus groups were conducted with 4 groups of undergraduate students and 4 groups of graduate/professional students. Eight key informant interviews were conducted with faculty. Content analyses were performed using inductive and deductive techniques to elicit common themes. Results: Many students and faculty were not aware of the detrimental effects associated with prolonged sitting. Barriers to movement in university settings included social acceptability, environmental constraints, and academic requirements. Acceptable interventions included: faculty prompts, changes to pedagogy, educational campaigns, and structural changes to classroom designs. Conclusions: University settings represent an opportunity to address issues related to prolonged sitting that may address immediate health implications, as well as establish behaviors and practices that can be continued in work-based settings.

Keywords:

• Prevention and control
• sedentary behavior
• students

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our funders, Jane and Terry Semel for their vision and ongoing and unwavering support of the UCLA Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center at UCLA. We would also like to thank the UCLA students, faculty and staff who volunteered their time and effort on this project, including Shweta Saraswat, Linghui Jiang, Anika Akhter, Jordan Wong, and Tiffany Hu.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Additional information

Funding

The funders for this work is The UCLA Semel Healthy Campus Initiative at UCLA.