Evaluating a school based childhood obesity intervention for posture and comfort

Abstract

Background: Research shows that students who\rare more active throughout the day have fewer reports of body part discomfort\rand greater energy expenditure needed to combat childhood obesity. Many\rfactors may contribute to the overall health of the child, including the postures\rthat are required to complete assigned tasks at their school workstations.\rDecreasing sedentary behaviors in children through the use of standing desks at\rschool has been shown to increase calorie expenditure and may be a viable\rapproach to the energy imbalance typical of modern children. The objective of\rthis research was to quantify and analyze sub-optimal postures and\rself-reported discomfort of students during the use of traditional seated and\rstand-biased desks to determine whether any unintended consequences of the\rintervention were present. Methods: A postural analysis based on the Portable Ergonomic\rObservation (PEO) method was used to assess the posture of 42 elementary school\rstudents as they worked at their assigned workstation (either standing or\rseated). Two classrooms contained stand-biased workstations (15 students) and\rtwo classrooms had traditional seated workstations (27 students). Each\rstudent was assessed three times at 10 minutes, for a total of 30 minutes of observations\reach. The percent of time spent in preferred versus non-preferred postures was\rthen computed. Student body part discomfort surveys were used to assess the\rdiscomfort of students between the two groups. The relationship between type\rof workstation and percent time in non-preferred postures and body discomfort\rwas examined using Wilcoxon ranksum tests and Fisher’s exact tests, respectively.\rThe significance level was p ≤ 0.05\rfor all of the two-sided tests. Results:\rNo significant difference was found between the two groups and time spent in\rnon-preferred postures and body discomfort, children using stand-biased workstations\rreported less discomfort overall. Stand-biased desks presented no additional ergonomic issues, while providing increased caloric expenditure. Conclusions: A\rstudy containing a larger sample and older children that includes postural\robservation throughout the school day is needed for future research.