Deirdre M. Harrington's research while affiliated with University of Strathclyde and other places
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Publications (83)
Objectives
Growing concern about children and adolescent physical inactivity has made the promotion of physical activity a public health priority. International recommendations suggest children should accumulate at least 30 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) during school hours. This study assessed levels of objectively-measured M...
Background
The Global Matrix of report card grades on physical activity serves as a public health awareness tool by summarising the status of child and youth physical activity prevalence and action. Since schools and the wider community and environment are critical influences on the physical activity levels of children and youth, this research soug...
To prepare the 2022 Ireland North and South Physical Activity Report Card, the strengths and weakness of the 2016 & 2014 Report Cards were reviewed. One of the primary strengths the 2022 edition was the inclusion of representatives in the research working group from across the island of Ireland, as this builds connections and allows for continued c...
There has been growing concern about rising physical inactivity levels in female adolescents, with schools taking some responsibility to address this. Programmes designed for and by girls are increasingly being used by developing or delivering a programme of change and consultation to improve physical activity, physical education, and sport in scho...
Introduction
Prevention of childhood overweight is an important health priority. Evidence synthesis from studies evaluating school-based overweight preventive interventions is hampered by the wealth of different outcomes across studies. Therefore, consensus on a core set of outcomes for school-based overweight prevention studies is needed. This pap...
Of interest across the domains of sport, education and health in the UK and internationally is the challenge of engaging girls in physical activity. There has been increasing support for novel approaches that take seriously the notion of ‘co-design’: i.e. involving girls in decision-making processes that directly and indirectly affect their engagem...
Background
The UK Government restrictions on non-essential work in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic forced millions of working aged-adults into an unplanned lifestyle change. We present data on changes in commuting behaviour in response to COVID-19 and describe the facilitators and barriers to switching commuting behavio...
Physical activity is a fundamental therapeutic aid in the management of type 2 diabetes (T2D). Regular engagement elicits a plethora of adaptations which leads to improvements in clinical outcomes, such as HbA1c, lipids and blood pressure as well as whole body health and physical function benefits. Those with T2D are encouraged to engage in a minim...
Background
Globally, there are estimated 425 million people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) with 80% from low-middle income countries (LMIC). Diabetes self-management education (DSME) programmes are a vital and core component of the treatment pathway for T2D. Despite LMIC being disproportionally affected by T2D, there are no DSME available that meet int...
The COVID‐19 pandemic has put diabetes at the forefront of conversation. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the UK is high1 and has links to adverse COVID‐19 outcomes2. Research investigating the links between these two public health issues are moving at pace. However, the pandemic has seen early career researchers (ECRs) in diabetes face profess...
Background
Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support (DSMES) programmes are vital for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) management. However, they are limited in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To address this gap, a DSMES, namedEXTEND was developed in Lilongwe (Malawi) and Maputo (Mozambique). This qualitative study aimed to explore factors that influ...
Objectives: The aim of this study was to generate new evidence on how The Daily Mile
(TDM), a popular school-based running programme in the UK, is implemented in a diverse
and multi-ethnic city in the UK and also the barriers faced by non-implementer schools.
Design: Mixed method cross-sectional study (including survey data collection and qualitati...
Aim
To describe concurrent screen use and any relationships with lifestyle behaviours and psychosocial health.
Methods
Participants wore an accelerometer for seven days to calculate physical activity sleep and sedentary time. Screen ownership and use and psychosocial variables were self‐reported. Body mass index (BMI) was measured. Relationships w...
Background:
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is increasing in young people. Reporting on the processes used when developing prevention interventions is needed. We present the development of a family-based interactive lifestyle intervention for adolescents with risk factors for T2D in the future.
Method:
A multidisciplinary team in the UK site led the inter...
Objectives:
The Global Matrix of report card grades on physical activity serves as a public health awareness tool by summarising the status of child and youth physical activity prevalence and action. The objectives were to: (1) provide a detailed examination of the evidence informing the 'School' and 'Community and Environment' indicators across a...
Deirdre Harrington and Michelle O'Reilly discuss the article "Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the GoActive intervention to increase physical activity among UK adolescents: A cluster randomised controlled trial" by Kirsten Corder and colleagues.
The UK Government restrictions on non-essential work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that millions of working aged-adults were forced into an unplanned change of lifestyle. We aim to present data on changes in planned commuting behaviour of public transport and car commuters and to describe the facilitators and barriers to switching...
Background:
Advanced (early) biological maturation may be a risk factor for inactivity among adolescent girls.
Aim:
To test the mediational effects of body attractiveness and physical self-worth on the relationship between biological maturity and accelerometer assessed moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in a large multi-ethnic sample...
The lack of consensus on meaningful and interpretable physical activity outcomes from accelerometer data hampers comparison across studies. Cut-point analyses are simple to apply and easy to interpret but can lead to results that are not comparable. We propose that the optimal accelerometer metrics for data analysis are not the same as the optimal...
Introduction:
Previous studies have linked short sleep duration, poor sleep quality, and late sleep timing with lower health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in children. However, almost all studies relied solely on self-reported sleep information, and most studies were conducted in high-income countries. To address these gaps, we studied both devi...
Background:
Girls Active is a physical activity programme, delivered in UK secondary schools, with the aim of increasing moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in girls aged 11-14 years. This study presents the process evaluation as part of a 14-month cluster randomised controlled trial designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Girls Ac...
Physical inactivity has been identified as a leading risk factor for premature mortality globally, and adolescents, in particular, have low physical activity levels. Schools have been identified as a setting to tackle physical inactivity. Economic evidence of school-based physical activity programmes is limited, and the costs of these programmes ar...
Background:
Traditionally Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) was associated with older age, but is now being increasingly diagnosed in younger populations due to the increasing prevalence of obesity and inactivity. We aimed to evaluate whether a tool developed for community use to identify adolescents at high lifetime risk of developing T2DM agreed w...
Objectives:
Our aim is to demonstrate how a data-driven accelerometer metric, the acceleration above which a person's most active minutes are accumulated, can (a) quantify the prevalence of meeting current physical activity guidelines for global surveillance and (b) moving forward, could inform accelerometer-driven physical activity guidelines. Un...
Background
Accelerometer-driven physical activity guidelines are not available, likely due to the lack of consensus on meaningful and interpretable accelerometer outcomes. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a data-driven accelerometer metric, the acceleration above which a person’s most active minutes are accumulated, can a) quantify the p...
Background
Physical activity (PA) levels among adolescent girls in the UK are low. ‘Girls Active’, developed by the Youth Sport Trust (YST), has been designed to increase girls’ PA levels.
Objective
To understand the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the Girls Active programme.
Design
A two-arm cluster randomised controlled trial.
Setting...
Aim: Evaluate the PRE-STARt intervention in five European countries (UK, Portugal, Spain, Germany and Greece).
Methods: The 8 family based interactive workshops aimed to elicit positive lifestyle behavior change in 12-14 year olds. The written curriculum was underpinned by specific learning theories and philosophy. Demographic, biomedical, anthropo...
Background:
Globally, adolescent girls' physical activity (PA) levels are low. The 'Girls Active' secondary school-based programme, developed by the Youth Sport Trust, aims to increase PA in adolescent girls. This paper explores the effectiveness of the 'Girls Active' school-based PA programme.
Methods:
A random sample of girls aged 11-14 from 2...
Purpose:
To determine the cross-sectional and cumulative compliance of adolescent girls to accelerometer wear at three deployment points and to identify variables associated with compliance.
Methods:
Girls from 20 secondary schools were recruited: 10 schools were participating in the 'Girls Active' intervention and 10 were control schools. Physi...
Purpose:
Commonly used physical activity metrics tell us little about the intensity distribution across the activity profile. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a metric, the intensity gradient, which can be used in combination with average acceleration (overall activity level) to fully describe the activity profile.
Methods:
1669 adolesc...
Introduction
Children engage in a high volume of sitting in school, particularly in the classroom. A number of strategies, such as physically active lessons (termed movement integration (MI)), have been developed to integrate physical activity into this learning environment; however, no single approach is likely to meet the needs of all pupils and...
Objective:
To investigate the association of 4 anthropometric measurements with cardiometabolic risk factors in a UK biethnic sample of South Asians (SAs) and white Europeans (WEs).
Patients and methods:
Baseline data were collected from adults of WE and SA origin participating in the Leicester arm of the Anglo-Danish-Dutch Study of Intensive Tr...
Objectives:
This study aims to determine the minimum number of days of monitoring required to reliably predict sitting/lying time, standing time, light intensity physical activity (LIPA), moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) and steps in adolescent females.
Methods:
195 adolescent females (mean age=15.7 years; SD=0.9) particip...
Background:
Physical activity (PA) is a key performance indicator for policy documents in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Building on baseline grades set in 2014, Ireland's second Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth allows for continued surveillance of indicators related to PA in children and youth.
Methods:...
How sedentary time (ST) relates to total and regional adiposity and whether these associations are independent of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA) are of clinical and public health interest. We assessed the relationship between objectively measured MVPA, ST and ST breaks in adults at risk of type 2 diabetes.
The sample consi...
Objective:
Household factors (electronic media equipment, play equipment, physical activity in the home, and social support) have been associated with childhood moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA), but little is known about how these factors differ across diverse countries. The objective was to explore household correlates of...
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) prevalence in the United States is significantly higher in African Americans vs Whites. Yet, the physiological mechanisms contributing to this health disparity have been poorly described. To design effective strategies to reduce this disparity, there is a need to determine whether racial differences in diabetes prevalence are...
Objectives:
The International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the Environment (ISCOLE) provides robust, multi-national information on physical activity, diet and weight status in 9-11-year-old children around the world. The purpose of this analysis was to examine the similarities and differences between participant characteristics from I...
Objective evidence suggests that sedentary behaviours (SB) increase throughout adolescence at the expense of light intensity physical activity (LIPA), particularly in females (Mitchell et al., 2012). The vast majority of studies that have objectively measured physical activity (PA) have relied on thresholds to estimate SB rather than directly exami...
Previously, studies examining correlates of sedentary behavior have been limited by small sample size, restricted geographic area, and little socio-cultural variability. Further, few studies have examined correlates of total sedentary time (SED) and screen time (ST) in the same population. This study aimed to investigate correlates of SED and ST in...
Background
Despite the health benefits of physical activity, data from the UK suggest that a large proportion of adolescents do not meet the recommended levels of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). This is particularly evident in girls, who are less active than boys across all ages and may display a faster rate of decline in physical ac...
The purpose was to determine if a 12-week weight loss intervention with a physical activity (PA) component would lead to changes in steps/day, step count accumulation patterns, and peak cadence.
Randomized clinical trial.
Overall, 121 overweight/obese White and African-American adults (ages 35-64yrs) were randomized to a diet education plus PA educ...
Background:
Strategies to increase adherence to national dietary and physical activity (PA) guidelines to improve the health in regions such as the Lower Mississippi Delta (LMD) of the United States are needed. Here we explore the cardiometabolic responses to an education and behavior change intervention among overweight and obese adults that adap...
Using NHANES 2009/2010, to describe the amount of time a representative sample of the U.S. population spends sitting by age, sex, ethnicity, education, and body mass index.
Cross-sectional analysis.
Participants (n=5911, ≥20 years) self-reported demographic variables and the amount of time they spend sitting on a typical day. Body mass index was ca...
Sedentary Behavior (SB) research has relied on accelerometer thresholds to distinguish between sitting/lying time (SLT) and light intensity physical activity (LIPA). Such methods may misclassify SLT, standing time (StT) and LIPA. This study examines the association between inclinometer-determined SB, physical activity (PA) and adiposity in an adole...
Objective
The Lower Mississippi Delta (LMD) region of the U.S. is characterized by high levels of obesity and physical inactivity. The objective was to test the effectiveness of adapting the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DG), with and without a physical activity (PA) component, for attenuating weight gain.
Design and Methods
Overall, 121...
Physical activity (PA) levels are a key performance indicator for policy documents in Ireland. The first Ireland Report Card on Physical Activity in Children and Youth aims to set a robust baseline for future surveillance of indicators related to PA in children and youth.
Data collected between 2003-2010 on more than 35,000 7- to 18-year-old childr...
Objective
To determine whether relationships exist between accelerometer-measured moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and other cardiovascular (CV) health metrics in a large sample.
Patients and Methods
Data from the 2003-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) collected from January 1, 2003, through December 31, 2...
Peters et al 1 report the results of the novel use of a number of datasets from the UK. By pooling data from five UK studies between 1980 and 2008, the authors used an overall sample of 22 843 white European children who had resting pulse rate assessed at around 10 years of age. Although the sample at each time-point varied (from n=12 164 in the 19...
Objective:
To examine the combined influence of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sedentary behavior on obesity in US adults.
Design and methods:
Cross-sectional analyses were undertaken on a nationally representative sample of 5,083 adults from the April 2003 and June 2005 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Self-r...
Sitting time is associated with adverse health outcomes including chronic disease and premature mortality. However, it is not known if the association of sitting time with cardiometabolic risk factors varies across sociodemographic or health factors.
The sample included 4560 adults (≥20 years) who participated in the cross-sectional 2007-2010 US Na...
The aim was to investigate relationships between activity related energy expenditure (AREE), appetite ratings and energy intake (EI) in a sample of 40 male (26.4 years; BMI 23.5 kg/m(2)) and 42 female (26.9 years; BMI 22.4 kg/m(2)) participants. AREE was expressed as the residual value of the regression between total daily EE (by doubly labeled wat...
It is largely unknown how TV use relates to depot-specific adiposity or cardiometabolic risk in children.
To examine relationships between having a TV in the bedroom and TV viewing time with total fat mass, abdominal subcutaneous and visceral adiposity, and cardiometabolic risk in children and adolescents.
A cross-sectional study of 369 children an...
Objectives:
Body mass index (BMI) percentiles have been routinely and historically used to identify elevated adiposity. The aim of this study was to investigate the optimal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) BMI percentile that predicts elevated visceral adipose tissue (VAT), fat mass and cardiometabolic risk in a biracial sample of...
Different waist circumference (WC) measurement sites are used in clinical and epidemiological settings.
To examine differences in WC measurement at four anatomic sites and how each WC measurement relates to visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and cardiometabolic risk factors in children.
A total of 371 white and African–American children aged 5 to 18 yea...
Epidemiological studies have associated the negative effects of sedentary time and sedentary patterns on health indices. However, these studies have used methodologies that do not directly measure the sedentary state. Recent technological developments in the area of motion sensors have incorporated inclinometers, which can measure the inclination o...
Background
The activPAL has been identified as an accurate and reliable measure of sedentary behaviour. However, only limited information is available on the accuracy of the activPAL activity count function as a measure of physical activity, while no unit calibration of the activPAL has been completed to date. This study aimed to investigate the cr...
The number of steps/minute (i.e., cadence) that equates to moderate intensity in adolescents is not known. To that end, 31 adolescent females walked on a treadmill at 5 different speeds while wearing an ActivPAL accelerometer and oxygen uptake was recorded by indirect calorimetry. The relationship between metabolic equivalents (METs) and cadence wa...
To investigate associations between anthropometric measurements and total body fat, abdominal adipose tissue, and cardiovascular disease risk factors in a large biracial sample.
This study is limited to cross-sectional analyses of data from participants attending a baseline visit between January 26, 1996, and February 1, 2011. The sample included 2...
INTRODUCTION: Television (TV) viewing is blamed as a contributor to low physical activity levels in children, yet it is unclear if such a sedentary behavior actually displaces exercise. HYPOTHESIS: Children who engage in higher levels of TV viewing will be less active than children who watch <1 hour of TV/day.
METHODS: This study utilized the ‘Grow...
Adolescent females have been highlighted as a particularly sedentary population and the possible negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle are being uncovered. However, much of the past sedentary research is based on self-report or uses indirect methods to quantity sedentary time. Total time spent sedentary and the possible intricate sedentary patt...
Author Contributions: Dr Katzmarzyk had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
Study concept and design: Barreira, Harrington, Staiano, Heymsfield, Katzmarzyk.
Analysis and interpretation of data: Barreira, Harrington, Staiano, Heymsfield, Katzmarzyk....
To determine how many steps·day(-1) equate to current moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) guidelines in a population from the Lower Mississippi Delta (LMD) of the United States, 58 overweight adults wore an Actigraph accelerometer (GT3X) for up to 2 weeks. Min·day(-1) in MVPA was a good predictor of steps·day(-1) (r(2) = 0.62; p < 0.001;...
Several studies have documented relationships between adipose tissue and bone mineral density (BMD); however, the degree to which there are racial differences in this relationship is not known. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between abdominal visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and BMD amo...
The purpose of this study was to determine the validity of the metabolic equivalent (MET) equation and step rate function of the ActivPAL™ physical activity logger in a group of females. Using a standard treadmill protocol, 62 females aged 15-25 years walked on a treadmill at speeds between 3.2 and 7.0 km · h(-1) while wearing an ActivPAL. Oxygen c...
non-peer-reviewed The following literature review describes the benefits of being physically active in childhood and adulthood and also the dangers that accompany inactivity. The benefits of being physically activity as a young person can affect future health and future physical activity levels and this link will be considered as a rationale for pr...
Citations
... Several travel attributes are found relevant to the change in travel mode during the pandemic. Some factors such as travel distance (Abdullah et al., 2020;Dingil & Esztergár-Kiss, 2021;Harrington & Hadjiconstantinou, 2022;La Paix, 2021;Schmidt et al., 2021), travel time (Abdullah et al., 2022;Das et al., 2021;La Paix, 2021;Luan et al., 2021;Ulahannan & Birrell, 2022), travel purpose (Abdullah et al., 2020;Abdullah et al., 2022;Bhaduri et al., 2020;Chen et al., 2021;Echaniz et al., 2021;Khaddar & Fatmi, 2021;Shakibaei et al., 2021), travel cost (Abdullah et al., 2022;La Paix, 2021;Luan et al., 2021), travel frequency (Abdullah et al., 2020;Abdullah et al., 2021), car or motorbike ownership (Abdullah et al., 2020;Abdullah et al., 2021;Chen et al., 2021;Schmidt et al., 2021;Zafri et al., 2021), overcrowding (Das et al., 2021), and comfort (Abdullah et al., 2022) are found relevant to the transport mode during the pandemic. Abdullah et al. (2020), based on an online survey with (N = 1203 respondents) from various countries and using multinomial logistic regression reported that shorter travel distance was positively associated with using private and active modes versus public transport. ...
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... Efforts directed at the general population will result in an improvement in the population with diabetes, but it is important to implement lifestyle improvement programs specifically aimed at the most vulnerable groups of people with diabetes, such as females, the elderly, and obese individuals, to help them to initiate and maintain the benefits of an active lifestyle. Linking exercise to leisure and socialization can be a particularly positive strategy in these patients [2,[42][43][44][45]. ...
... The intervention tested was a structured DSME program which had been adapted from DESMOND: EXTENDing availability of self-management structured education programmes for people with type 2 Diabetes in low-tomiddle income countries (EXTEND). EXTEND has been piloted in Malawi and Mozambique [11]. DESMOND is a cost-effective structured DSME program, originally developed in the United Kingdom [6,12,13]. ...
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