A leading driver behind the Talk N Walk program is the wealth of research that demonstrates time in nature improves mental and physical health and wellbeing.
Research also shows a dramatic drop off in levels of physical activity for girls aged 11-14 (90% do not meet Australia's physical activity guidelines), and demonstrate that traditional physical education, and organised or competitive sport programs have not been successful in improving this statistic.
Read just some of the research below.
The Women in Sport Reframing Sport for Teenage Girls insight showed the need to engage girls in more active lifestyles has never been more urgent. This generation of teenage girls are experiencing worrying mental health issues and report being less confident, less happy and increasingly concerned with their appearance[1]. The pandemic has amplified these issues for many girls.
High quality Physical Education should instigate and support all learners to develop into a lifelong participant in a way which upkeeps their own health, fitness, and well-being. There are, however, an ever-increasing number of children who drop out of participating in physical activities at the earliest opportunity, leading to an increase in sedentary lifestyles and a rise in childhood obesity.
The present study used a multi-method approach to qualitatively explore whether the perceptions of young women and girls and exercise providers are aligned in terms of the factors that influence participation with the aim to better understand how these factors influence participation.
Declines in outdoor activities and park use during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic were linked to reductions in mental health measures for teens and young adults from middle school through college, according to two new studies led by North Carolina State University researchers.
The majority of adolescents do not meet current physical activity guidelines. Urgent scaling up of implementation of known effective policies and programmes is needed to increase activity in adolescents.
A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa,” has for the first time demonstrated an association between regular physical activity during childhood and higher lung-function values in adolescent girls.
Mothers and daughters find spending time outdoors together strengthens communication and family connectedness Twenty-six mothers and daughters participated in semi-structured interviews focusing on their experiences with family-based nature activities (FBNA), defined as two or more family members engaging in outdoor recreation. The mother and daughter interviews were conducted simultaneously but in separate rooms. This arrangement […]
Too many women and girls are needlessly missing out on the lifelong benefits and rewards of sport and physical activity and what happens during teenage years is a huge contributor to this issue.
The majority of adolescent girls fail to meet public health guidelines for physical activity. Engaging mothers in the promotion of physical activity for their daughters may be an important strategy to facilitate behaviour change. The aim of this study was to use the behaviour change wheel (BCW) framework to design the components of an intervention to improve adolescent girls’ physical activity.
The findings of this study identified several direct effects of the social and physical environment on PA enjoyment that can begin to inform environmental-level strategies for increasing PA enjoyment among early adolescent girls.