26 September 2023
Researchers and children talked about active school transport with the government
Twenty children visited the Minister for Social Affairs and Public Health, Jakob Forssmed, to talk about the school route they walk or cycle on. The visit took place together with researchers who presented the project Active school transport.
The active school transport project aims to promote children's natural opportunity for more movement in everyday life, to walk or cycle to school, and is led by researchers at Luleå University of Technology. Minister of Social Affairs Jakob Forssmed invited researchers and children to the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs to emphasize the importance of increasing the movement of children and young people and to hear more about active school transport.
“This project is exciting because it inspires children to fun everyday exercise together with other children. These are good habits to get into early in life, because we know what a threat not getting enough physical activity is to children's health,” says Jakob Forssmed.
Promising results so far
Anna-Karin Lindqvist, Associate Professor at Luleå University of Technology, described that the daily physical activity that children get through active school transport shows a number of good results both in terms of learning ability and study results, strengthened friendships and cohesion in the classroom. The children develop and feel pride in both being able to get through school themselves and contributing to a better environment.
“We started with the children's presentations, it feels genuinely right because we always had the end users in focus. In addition, one of our goals has also been for the results of our research to be communicated to those in power. Then we moved on to what the project had achieved so far. We got a confirmation that we are on the right track, and we leave the meeting with new thoughts about what to do next. We will continue our work on reaching out with the message to change norms,” says Anna-Karin Lindqvist.
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