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There is an urgent need for scalable interventions to promote physical activity in early childhood. An early childhood education and care physical activity policy intervention with implementation support strategies (Play Active) has been proposed for scale-up in Australia. 

Physical activity is crucial for young children's health and development. Many young children do not meet the recommended 3 hours of daily physical activity, including 60 min of energetic play. Early childhood education and care (ECEC/childcare) is a key setting to intervene to improve children's physical activity. The Play Active programme is a scalable evidence-informed ECEC-specific physical activity policy intervention with implementation support strategies to improve educators' physical activity-related practices.

This scoping review considers the experiences of aspiring high school-aged athletes as they navigate the complexities of managing sport, education, social, and family life. The review synthesises existing literature on the decisions, barriers, facilitators, and support systems that influence aspiring athletes' pathways.

Regular exercise can be beneficial for people living with a severe mental illness. By better understanding the perspectives and challenges of adults with severe mental illness who are engaged in exercise, we can enhance the design and implementation of exercise programs to better support their mental health and recovery.

Despite evidence suggesting regular exercise (i.e. structured, repetitive and purposeful physical activity) attenuates cardiac patients’ decline in health, our understanding of factors affecting long-term exercise participation among this patient cohort is limited. This problem is pertinent, given that less than half of cardiac patients adhere to exercise following discharge from formal exercise-based rehabilitation programmes. In this study, we explored factors influencing exercise participation after an outpatient cardiac rehabilitation programme. 

High levels of sedentary behaviour are associated with poor child health outcomes such as obesity. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services are a key intervention setting. Most ECEC policy-based interventions focus on children's nutrition and physical activity with few aimed at children's sedentary behaviour.

Assessment of motor competence is critical for planning and monitoring children's development. However, many assessment tools require time, training, and resources not available to most teachers. We aimed to evaluate the external aspect of construct validity of a rapid product-oriented fundamental movement skill assessment tool designed specifically for primary education settings.

Childhood is a critical period for the development of movement behaviours such as physical activity, sleep and sedentary behaviour. The PLAYCE Cohort was established to investigate how movement behaviours change over early to middle childhood, across key behaviour settings and relationships with health and development. An overview of the PLAYCE cohort, summary of key findings to date, and future research opportunities are presented.

Youth sports programs provide an opportunity to embed mental health and wellbeing programs to reach young people with mental health support. The aims of this study were to (a) examine mental health outcomes from a youth sports program including a mental health program (Life-Fit-Learning) in adolescent boys and girls, and (b) among the larger cohort of adolescent boys, to examine whether partial or full completion of Life-Fit-Learning yielded different outcomes for boys within healthy and high-risk ranges for anxiety, depression and behavioral concerns. 

The physical health comorbidities and premature mortality experienced by people with mental illness has led to an increase in exercise services embedded as part of standard care in hospital-based mental health services. Despite the increase in access to exercise services for people experiencing mental illness, there is currently a lack of guidelines on the assessment and triage of patients into exercise therapy.