Co-benefits of physical activity: assisting cardiometabolic disease prevention and climate change mitigation by active travel to school

Abstract

With many children and adolescents at risk of developing cardiometabolic disease (e.g. type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease) due to their low physical activity levels (Steene-Johannessen et al., 2020) and global concerns of climate change placing uncertainty on their futures (Gasparri et al., 2022), research on the co-benefits of physical activity for human and planetary health is highly topical and of interest to these young populations. A recent harmonised analysis (n=47,497) reported that around two-thirds of European children and adolescents aged 2–18 years are not sufficiently active, defined as less than an average of 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day (WHO, 2020), when measured objectively, with higher inactivity in girls versus boys and with increasing age (Steene-Johannessen et al., 2020). Targeting young people to aid disease prevention rather than focusing efforts towards treatment in later life may also be of planetary benefit due to reduced greenhouse gas emissions associated with disease either directly via, for example, blood analysis consumables, drug manufacturing and clinical waste disposal associated with diagnosis and treatment, or indirectly via disease effects on lifestyle, among other things (Eckelman et al., 2018).