Pro­mot­ing phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and the over­all health of adults and youth is a worth­while goal for in­di­vid­u­als and so­ci­ety.

The 2024 Glob­al Health Re­port states that the lev­el of phys­i­cal in­suf­fi­cien­cy for most Caribbean coun­tries ranges be­tween 30 per cent and 49 per cent, ex­cept Saint Lu­cia, whose lev­els are be­tween 20 per cent and 29 per cent.

Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bar­ba­dos, and Saint Kitts and Nevis range be­tween 40 per cent and 49 per cent for peo­ple aged 18.

The Lancet study find­ings are con­sis­tent with the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency [CARPHA] Re­port 2021, which stat­ed that “the Caribbean has some of the high­est rates of over­weight and obe­si­ty in the Amer­i­c­as, with adults rang­ing from 18.9 per cent in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da to 31.6 per cent in the Ba­hamas.

Alarm­ing­ly, over­weight and obe­si­ty preva­lence lev­els in chil­dren aged 5-9 years in CARI­COM coun­tries are in­creas­ing, high­est in the Ba­hamas at 39.5 per cent and low­est in Saint Lu­cia at 26.1 per cent. Obe­si­ty in Caribbean chil­dren is two to three times high­er than in the world.

With the obe­si­ty epi­dem­ic in chil­dren and ado­les­cents, the fu­ture seen through the risk fac­tor lens for non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) looks dis­mal, as these young per­sons will be the fu­ture work­ing gen­er­a­tion but liv­ing with high­er rates of NCDs.”

CARPHA rec­om­mends that chil­dren and adults en­gage in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and con­sume healthy di­ets.

There­fore, the fam­i­ly [grand­par­ents, aunts, un­cles] is cru­cial in en­sur­ing their chil­dren’s high­ly nu­tri­tious well-be­ing. Sev­er­al stud­ies [quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive] have shown a pos­i­tive cor­re­la­tion be­tween sol­id fam­i­ly in­flu­ence on youth en­gage­ment in sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Yao and Rhodes [2021] found a pos­i­tive as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween par­ent and child phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty lev­els, sug­gest­ing that ac­tive par­ents tend to have ac­tive chil­dren. This mod­el­ling ef­fect un­der­scores the im­por­tance of par­ents demon­strat­ing healthy be­hav­iours to in­still sim­i­lar prac­tices in their off­spring.

Brown et al. (2016) high­light­ed that fam­i­ly-based in­ter­ven­tions, which ac­tive­ly en­gage fam­i­ly mem­bers in pro­mot­ing phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, ef­fec­tive­ly in­crease ac­tiv­i­ty lev­els among chil­dren.

These in­ter­ven­tions of­ten in­volve col­lab­o­ra­tive goal-set­ting and re­in­force­ment strate­gies, cre­at­ing a sup­port­ive en­vi­ron­ment that mo­ti­vates chil­dren to be more ac­tive. Sim­i­lar­ly, Hen­nessy et al. [2010] claim that sup­port­ive par­ent­ing styles con­tribute to high­er lev­els of chil­dren’s en­gage­ment in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. They found that the chil­dren of in­spir­ing par­ents had more mod­er­ate-vig­or­ous phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty (MV­PA) time than those whose par­ents were un­in­volved. Con­se­quent­ly, en­abling and en­gaged par­ents/guardians are more like­ly to get their chil­dren to make the ex­tra ef­fort in their ac­tiv­i­ties. In oth­er words, the chil­dren may go the ex­tra mile with the ‘right’ parental/guardian mo­ti­va­tion.

En­gag­ing in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties to­geth­er as a fam­i­ly strength­ens fa­mil­ial bonds and pro­motes a cul­ture of ac­tiv­i­ty.

Sev­er­al sport­ing and cul­tur­al events of­fer op­por­tu­ni­ties for fam­i­ly en­gage­ment. For in­stance, train­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing as a fam­i­ly in the cal­en­dar of 5k fun walk/run ac­tiv­i­ties is a pro­duc­tive way of cre­at­ing a phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty fam­i­ly cul­ture—burn-out ses­sions in prepa­ra­tion for the car­ni­val sea­son, Phag­wa cel­e­bra­tions, and the an­nu­al kite fly­ing event at East­er.

The events can be com­pet­i­tive and leisure­ly, en­sur­ing the rec­om­mend­ed [WHO] de­sired phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is at­tained. This ap­proach em­pha­sis­es the role of shared ex­pe­ri­ences in fos­ter­ing long-term ad­her­ence to ac­tive lifestyles. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there are la­tent so­cial and psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits.

De­spite the ap­par­ent ben­e­fits, sev­er­al chal­lenges can im­pede the pro­mo­tion of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty in fam­i­lies. These in­clude so­cioe­co­nom­ic fac­tors such as fi­nan­cial con­straints, re­li­gious be­liefs, tra­di­tion­al be­liefs, and gen­der ide­ol­o­gy that can lim­it ac­cess to or­gan­ised sports and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the in­creas­ing preva­lence of seden­tary be­hav­iours, of­ten dri­ven by screen time and traf­fic, pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er.

Fam­i­ly en­gage­ment and in­flu­ence are vi­tal for youth’s ear­ly in­volve­ment in sports, phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, and stay­ing in­volved post-young adult­hood.

Re­search on the fam­i­ly’s im­pact on sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty en­gage­ment is es­sen­tial in rais­ing aware­ness and guid­ing ac­tion at the mi­cro, meso, and macro lev­els.

The Min­istries of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Health, Ed­u­ca­tion, and Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs) will be the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fi­cia­ries in fos­ter­ing ro­bust fam­i­ly en­gage­ment in chil­dren’s sport­ing life.

Par­ents/guardians must con­tin­ue en­cour­ag­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing with their chil­dren in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty—run­ning, walk­ing, bik­ing, swim­ming, crick­et, foot­ball, and kite fly­ing, among oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.

The ob­jec­tive should be for phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty to be­come high­ly in­fec­tious and ad­dic­tive, as the out­comes are tremen­dous­ly ben­e­fi­cial.