Congratulations to Dr. Mark Tremblay and colleagues on their recent publication “Physical fitness surveillance and monitoring systems inventory for children and adolescents: A scoping review with a global perspective” published in Sports Medicine! The abstract and citation are provided below.

Abstract:

Surveillance of health-related physical fitness can improve decision-making and intervention strategies promoting health for children and adolescents. However, no study has comprehensively analyzed surveillance/monitoring systems for physical fitness globally. This review sought to address this gap by identifying: (1) national-level surveillance/monitoring systems for physical fitness among children and adolescents globally, (2) the main barriers and challenges to implementing surveillance/monitoring systems, and (3) governmental actions related to existing surveillance/monitoring systems. We used a scoping review to search, obtain, group, summarize, and analyze available evidence. Our review involved three stages: (1) identification of surveillance systems through a systematic literature review, with complementary search of the grey literature (e.g., reference lists, Google Scholar, webpages, recommendations), (2) systematic consultation with relevant experts using a Delphi method to confirm/add systems and to gather and analyze information on the barriers and challenges to implementing systems, and (3) Web searches for public documents on government sites and surveillance/monitoring system pages, and direct internet searches to identify relevant governmental actions related to surveillance systems. A total of 15 fitness surveillance/monitoring systems met our inclusion criteria. Experts identified a lack of government support and funding, and the low priority of fitness on the public health agenda as the main barriers/challenges to implementation. Several governmental actions related to surveillance systems were identified, including policies, strategies, programs, and guidelines. We propose a Global Observatory of Physical Fitness to help address these issues.

Citation:

Brazo-Sayavera, J., Silva, D. R., Lang, J. J., Tomkinson, G. R., Agostinis-Sobrinho, C., Andersen, L. B., García-Hermoso, A., Gaya, A. R., Jurak, G., Lee, E. Y., Liu, Y., Lubans, D. R., Okely, A. D., Ortega, F. B., Ruiz, J. R., Tremblay, M. S., & Dos Santos, L. (2024). Physical Fitness Surveillance and Monitoring Systems Inventory for Children and Adolescents: A Scoping Review with a Global Perspective. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 54(7), 1755–1769. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-024-02038-9

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