Associations among Active Commuting to School and Prevalence of Obesity in Adolescents: A Systematic Review

Evelyn Martin-Moraleda, Sandy Mandic, Ana Queralt, Cristina Romero-Blanco and Susana Aznar ()
Additional contact information
Evelyn Martin-Moraleda: PAFS Research Group, Faculty of Sports Sciences, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 45004 Toledo, Spain
Sandy Mandic: Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, School of Sport and Recreation, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Ana Queralt: Department of Nursing, University of Valencia, 46010 Valencia, Spain
Cristina Romero-Blanco: PAFS Research Group, Faculty of Nursing, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
Susana Aznar: PAFS Research Group, Faculty of Sports Sciences, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 45004 Toledo, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 17, 1-13

Abstract: Active commuting to school (ACS) seems to be one of the means to increase physical activity (PA) levels in youth, but it is unclear if ACS reduces the prevalence of obesity, protecting and improving their health. Most of the previous research has been conducted on children or youth (i.e., children with adolescents together), and there is a paucity of research in adolescents only. The purpose of this review was to assess the association between ACS with overweight/obesity parameters in adolescents aged 11 to 19 years. We used PubMed, WOS and SPORTDiscus as electronics databases. All steps of the process followed the recommendations of the PRISMA flow-diagram. Fifteen articles (68.18%) found a consistent association between ACS and body composition and seven studies (31.82%) showed no differences in body composition between active and passive commuters to school. Fourteen studies observed that active commuters to school had a more favorable body composition and one study reported that ACS was associated with unfavourable body composition. ACS could be the steppingstone to improve PA promotion in adolescence but whether ACS is associated with improved body composition and prevention of obesity requires further research.

Keywords: adolescents; active commuting; obesity; overweight; school (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/17/10852/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/17/10852/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:17:p:10852-:d:902736

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().