LATEBREAKER
Environment/Climate Change
Neighborhood features related to child physical activity, sleep, and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from the All Our Families Study Tona Pitt* Tona Pitt Gavin McCormack Maria Ospina Suzanne Tough Sheila McDonald
During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments implemented public health measures to reduce disease transmission by restricting individuals to homes and area. As well, incidence of mental health issues increased among children. Since activities were restricted to neighborhoods, features of the neighborhood (i.e., greenspace, walkability) may have contributed to protecting child mental health by promoting healthy behaviors like physical activity and sleep.
This study aims to describe urban form features associated with health behaviors and mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This study will use data from the All Our Families Cohort (Calgary, Canada). A subsample of this pregnancy cohort participated in three surveys on pandemic experiences (May 2020, March 2021, and November 2021) and a child development survey completed in August 2023.
Descriptive statistics of health behaviors and mental health symptoms will be calculated over those four surveys. As well, we will compare neighborhood features for children who did and did not experience clinically relevant mental health symptoms, who did and did not accumulate recommended levels of physical activity and who did and did not accumulate levels of sleep recommended by the Canadian Paediatric Society.
At the first COVID-19 survey (n=893), 42.0% of children met the recommended guidelines for physical activity. At the third survey (n=1,021), this percentage reduced to 19.4%. The prevalence of clinically significant mental health symptoms among children increased over time. Initially, 5.8%, 5.2%, 2.3%, and 3.7% of children displayed symptoms indicative of anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, and inattention, respectively. By the third survey, these numbers increased to 9.6% for anxiety, 9.9% for depression, 4.4% for hyperactivity, and 8.4% for inattention.
As we have just recently received these data, next steps will describe the neighborhood features for children by health behaviors and symptoms over the pandemic.