A two-week summer program promoting physical activity: quality of life assessment in Italian children

ABSTRACT

Physical activity (PA) can be associated with better health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This study aimed to assess HRQoL before and after a two-week summer program promoting PA in Italian school-aged children. Participants were recruited during the Giocampus summer2017 (Parma, Italy), from June to July. Before (T0) and after (T1) the program, children and one of their parents answered the Kindl questionnaire. For each domain, least-square mean changes (LSmc) at T1 were derived from linear regression models stratified by responder and adjusted for child gender, age group, time spent in PAs and HRQoL score of the responder at T0. 350 children (7-13 years, 52% males) and 342 parents answered the questionnaire at both T0 and T1. At T1, the HRQoL score of the children significantly improved in the emotional (LSmc 2.9, p<0.001), self-esteem (LSmc 3.3, p<0.001), family (LSmc 4.2, p<0.001) and friend (LSmc 3.1, p<0.001) domains. Parents reported significantly more improvement in self-esteem than children (LSmc 6.7 vs 3.3, p=0.012). Children spending more time in PA reported significantly more improvement in self-esteem than those doing less PA (LSmc 4.4 [p<0.001] vs 2.2 [p=0.181]). A short summer program promoting PA may improve HRQoL in the general population of school-aged children.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• health-related quality of life (HRQoL)
• physical activity
• short summer program

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Attilio Turchetta for the insightful suggestions.

Author contributions

VF: conceptualization and design of the study, investigation, supervision, drafting and revision of the manuscript. SF: study methodology, investigation, data curation and analysis, drafting and revision of the manuscript. CM: investigation, supervision, revision of the manuscript. EV: supervision of the study, revision of the manuscript. SLG: conceptualization and design of the study, revision of the manuscript. MV: conceptualization and design of the study, methodology, supervision, revision of the manuscript.

All authors approved the final manuscript and are accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Data availability

Data are available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any grant.