AIMPA initiatives including 5 evidence-based recommendations for promoting physical activity for children and youth with disabilities.
Image: A child sits on a soccer field with a prosthetic leg. They rest their arms around their legs, Wearing a purple sweatshirt and shorts.
Our team has developed recommendations to help organizations promote and support physical activity for children and youth with disabilities. We have five evidence-based recommendations.
OverviewPhysical activity through play, sport, and active transportation offers many physical, social and mental health benefits to children and youth with disabilities. However, a lack of accessible and relevant physical activity information is a known barrier to physical activity participation among children and youth with disabilities and a common source of frustration among families.
As a first step in addressing this barrier, our team has established a set of evidence-based recommendations to assist organizations in developing and disseminating physical activity information and messages targeting families of children and youth with disabilities.
These recommendations were developed for use by any organization that works to promote, support or deliver physical activity for children and youth with disabilities. The recommendations are meant to assist organizations in promoting and supporting physical activity for children and youth with any type of disability, through providing parents or caregivers with helpful or motivating information.
Specifically, the recommendations were designed to help address the following questions:
The development of these recommendations was guided by a systematic approach that involved identifying and gathering the best available evidence from the scientific literature and expert consultations. We also held a two-day consensus meeting with knowledge users (e.g., researchers, families of children and youth with disabilities, leaders in physical activity promotion and delivery, and experts in knowledge mobilization) to establish the final recommendations.
Not all of the recommendations may be relevant to the missions and values of your organization. You can choose to focus on the ones that are most relevant to your organization. It may also be that your organization already follows some of the recommendations but wishes to improve in other areas. By following some or all of these recommendations, your organization can improve the availability of physical activity information that is valued and desired by families of children and youth with disabilities.
Moving forward, we are working to develop tools and resources that will make it easier for organizations to implement the recommendations and support physical activity for children and youth with disabilities.
We are in the process of developing tools to help organizations use the recommendations. For now, we have created a toolkit to help provide some suggestions for applying each of the recommendations.
Review our English and French Recommendation Toolkits. Clicking the buttons below will re-direct you to a PDF preview in a new tab, with a download option.
PDF Toolkit (English)PDF Toolkit (French)In creating these five recommendations for promoting physical activity for children and youth with disabilities, we partnered with a team of organizations and individuals.
Partner List
Image: 16 organization logos. Abilities Centre, Active Living Alliance for Canadians with a Disability, Active for Life, Canadian Paralympic Committee, Canucks Autism Network, Inclusion Incorporated, MLSE Launchpad, Queen's University, ParticipACTION, Special Olympics Ontario, The Steadward Centre University of Alberta, Toronto Accessible Sports Council, The University of British Columbia Centre for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Management Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Variety The Children's Charity of Ontario, and York University.
No project is ever done alone! We'd like to thank the people and organizations who helped develop this checklist.
School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University:
Active Living Alliance for Canadians Living with Disabilities:
Thank you to Alexandra Walters for her contributions to the development of knowledge translation products.
Funding to support the development of the recommendations was provided by The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Sport Canada Innovation Fund, and The Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science.
Natkunam, T., Tristani, L., Peers, D., Fraser-Thomas, J.L., Latimer-Cheung, A. E., Bassett-Gunter, R.L. (2020). Using a Think Aloud Methodology to Understand Online Physical Activity Information Search Experiences and Preferences of Parents of Children and Youth with Disabilities. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 33(6), 1478-1488.
Bassett-Gunter, R. L., Tristani, L. (June 2020). Getting the message across: A collaborative approach to establishing recommendations for the development and dissemination of physical activity information targeting parents of children with disabilities. York University, Toronto, ON. Available on the CDPP website: Getting The Message Across.
Larocca, V., Arbour-Nicitopoulos, K. P, Tomasone, J. R., Latimer-Cheung, A. E., & Bassett-Gunter, R. L. (2021). Developing and disseminating physical activity messages targeting parents: A systematic scoping review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(13), 7046.
Bassett-Gunter, R.L, Tomasone, J., Latimer-Cheung, A., Arbour-Nicitopoulos, K., Disimino, K., Larocca, V., Tristani, L., Martin Ginis, K., Leo, J., Vanderloo, L., Sora, D., & Allison, A. (2023). Evidence-Informed Recommendations for Community-Based Organizations Developing Physical Activity Information Targeting Families of Children and Youth With Disabilities. Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly. Advance online publication.
