Clinical trial NCT00758615: Pilot Evaluation of a Walking School Bus Program
Official title: Pilot and Feasibility Evaluation of a Walking School Bus Program Intervention for Elementary School Students
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Obesity
Physical Activity
Pedestrian Safety
Injury Prevention
Keywords: Obesity
Physical activity
Injury Prevention
Pedestrian safety
Self efficacy
School
Walking School Bus
Safe Routes to School
Lead sponsor: Seattle Children's Hospital
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2008-09-25
Enrollment: 149
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 8
Maximum age (years): 12
Standard ages: CHILD
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: PREVENTION

Brief summary: Walking to school is one of the objectives for children and adolescents in Healthy People 2010 and in previous studies was associated with higher levels of overall physical activity, which has been shown to decrease obesity. Therefore, more children walking to school should result in increased physical activity and presumably reduce obesity. However, increasing child pedestrian activity could increase the risk of child pedestrian injuries. Walking with an adult who provides instruction in pedestrian skills and monitors the child's actual behavior may be the most important component of a successful intervention. Walking with an adult reduced child pedestrian injury risk by almost 70%. A walking school bus (WSB) addresses safety concerns by providing a period of physical activity supervised by several responsible adults and teaching opportunities around pedestrian safety skills on the way to and from school. Children may join the WSB at various points along the set route. Despite the growing popularity of WSB programs in the United States, randomized, controlled-studies are lacking that examine the impact on children's safety, physical activity, and health. We seek to help fill this gap in the literature by piloting a WSB program in elementary schools in the Houston Independent School District to test feasibility. We hypothesize that a WSB program will: (1) increase the number of students walking to school and decrease the number of students driven to school by car, (2) increase students' pedestrian safety behaviors (3) increase students' physical activity, and (4) decrease students' excess weight gain.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* 4th grade student at a study school in the Houston Independent School District
* Must be physically able to walk to and from school

Exclusion Criteria:

* Any condition that would prevent the student from walking to or from school

Primary outcomes:
measure: Method of student transportation to school
timeFrame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Physical activity
timeFrame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
measure: Pedestrian crosswalk behavior
timeFrame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
measure: Parents' psychosocial constructs related to allowing their child to walk to school
timeFrame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
measure: Child's self-efficacy for walking to school
timeFrame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Houston
country: United States
facility: Baylor College of Medicine
state: Texas
Study officials:
affiliation: Seattle Children's Hospital
name: Jason A Mendoza, MD, MPH
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Mendoza JA, Watson K, Baranowski T, Nicklas TA, Uscanga DK, Hanfling MJ. The walking school bus and children's physical activity: a pilot cluster randomized controlled trial. Pediatrics. 2011 Sep;128(3):e537-44. doi: 10.1542/peds.2010-3486. Epub 2011 Aug 22.