Research summary
Despite the health benefits associated with regular physical activity, most young Canadians don’t get enough exercise. Even fewer young people meet the 24-hour movement guidelines, which consider not only physical activity, but also how much we sit and sleep. For a variety of reasons, efforts to intervene have largely failed to get youth moving more.
Dr. Matthew Kwan, Canada Research Chair in Youth Mental Health and Performance, aims to understand the factors that lead to increased physical activity and other health-promoting behaviours, and how these behaviours affect youths’ mental health and well-being. Kwan and his research team are integrating new theoretical and methodological approaches and using emerging technologies to better understand how we can increase the activity levels of Canadian youth.