Promoting physical activity for children: consultation on the evidence

NICE was asked by the Department of Health (DH) to develop guidance on physical activity, play and sport for pre-school and school-age children in family, pre-school, school and community settings. The scope is available from the NICE website:

All registered stakeholders were invited to comment on the evidence that has been assembled to inform the development of this guidance. This evidence is being used by the Programme Development Group (PDG) on physical activity for children to develop draft recommendations. The evidence comprises a series of reviews of effectiveness, a cost effectiveness analysis and other types of reviews.

Key areas for comment:

The aim of this consultation was to enable stakeholders to consider the evidence gathered and to provide the opportunity to comment, in particular on:

  • major gaps in the evidence gathered, including papers in the published literature that we have not been able to identify
  • queries around the interpretation of the evidence, both of single studies and the reviewed material as a whole
  • the applicability of the evidence and its usefulness for the development of guidance
  • issues relating to cost-effectiveness

Registered stakeholders were also invited to submit relevant additional evidence for consideration. In order for NICE to be able to produce guidance in a timely fashion, materials should be:

  • relevant to the questions set out in the scope document
  • currently not included in the evidence reviews
  • provided as a PDF or electronic link to an accessible version of the complete document.

Any material submitted by stakeholders during this consultation was assessed for its relevance using NICE's standard methods, as set out in the 'Methods for development of NICE public health guidance'. Relevant material will be included in a supplementary report to the PDG

The consultation on this evidence ran from 12 May to 9 June 2008.

 

Consultation Documents

The first 8 reviews above were carried out by the Public Health Collaborating Centre for Physical Activity. This is an alliance of the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group (University of Oxford) and the British Heart Foundation National Centre for Physical Activity and Health (Loughborough University).

The review of the economic evidence (review 9) was carried out by the Health Economics Research Centre, Department of Public Health at the University of Oxford.

The Cost effectiveness analysis was conducted by the Heath Economics Group, School of Medicine, Health Policy & Practice at the University of East Anglia.

Please note, the evidence presented here does not constitute the Institute's guidance on this topic. NICE will issue draft guidance on Promoting physical activity for children in August 2008.

This page was last updated: 30 March 2010