“One mile a day”, this unique project is started at the elementary school ‘Kompas’ in Geel, where students from the 1th to 6th grade are running one mile a day. MHU investigated the effect of running one mile a day on physical fitness and general health status after a period of 6 months.
Protocol: Several parameters were measured before (length, weight and heart rate), during (distance, speed, time and GPS data) and after (heart rate) the sport activity. While running, each student received a smartphone for measuring their physical activity and for logging GPS data. Data collection was done at 3 time points (start of project, after 3 months and after 6 months) for exploring the level of change in health and fitness during the project.
Results: Based on the first results, there were 2 important effects. First, 72% of the students with a high BMI have lost weight. Second, in the older classes (5th 58% and 6th 54% grade), students were losing more weight than in the younger classes (3th 16% en 4th 24%). This project allowed to test new technologies (smartphone) in the domain of primary prevention (obesity) on population level.
Read the article in “Het Laatste Nieuws”: One Mile a Day
