Less than 10% of adolescents globally, including in Australia, do enough physical activity to align with the amount required for young people to be healthy.
Knowing the potential impact from this—including diabetes, heart disease and some cancers—Dr Rachel Sutherland could not sit still. She transitioned from being a clinician to a full-time researcher to focus on childhood obesity prevention and the teenager group, in particular.
This story is part of our 10 of the Best -Fifteenth edition. 10 of the Best is an annual NHMRC publication, showcasing 10 NHMRC-funded health and medical research projects. See more 10 of the Best.
‘After working for 15 years as a dietitian it seemed to me that the adolescent age group misses out on a lot, but needs a lot of support,’ said Dr Sutherland, who now works for the University of Newcastle as a research fellow.
‘I saw a great need to integrate research into practice to fill the important gap in health service delivery.’
Through her NHMRC Translating Research into Practice Fellowship, Dr Sutherland aimed to find evidence-based methods that would embed physical activity programs in schools, particularly in low socioeconomic status (Low SES) areas.
‘I was pretty confident that if the research findings and knowledge were put into practice, on school ovals and in the gym, we’d see results,’ said Dr Sutherland.
‘So, you could best describe me as “dogged” about identifying the right kind of implementation methods for schools,’ she quipped.
Dr Sutherland worked closely with 49 secondary schools; not always an easy feat as school staff are incredibly busy. The COVID-19 pandemic also presented a significant challenge, but this didn’t deter Dr Sutherland.
‘We engaged with school executives and teachers to ensure we could gather as much data as possible and make the project a success,’ said Dr Sutherland.
‘Highlights included bringing teachers together and the substantial increase in the implementation of evidence-based physical activity practices. The project also had unintended positive consequences where passionate teachers were uplifted and secured leadership opportunities in their schools,’ she said.
‘People learning from each other, and the resulting Community of Practice translated to tangible results. There is very little research evaluating effective strategies to support schools to implement evidence into practice. Our strategies resulted in over 7 in 10 schools fully implementing the program. That’s something I’m really proud of,’ said Dr Sutherland.
The Fellowship work achieved substantial impact in New South Wales (NSW) including:
- Best-practice physical activity practices in schools improving from 0% to 72% within 12 months and maintained at 2 years.
- The exposure of ~50,000 adolescents to best practice physical activity environments.
- Internationally significant findings as the first and only program internationally to increase low SES adolescent physical activity by 49 minutes/week (equivalent to a 10% increase) and limit unhealthy weight gain (2kg difference between groups), in low SES adolescents.
The evidence generated from the research has now been used in a NSW government modelling study, is being scaled up across the region and Dr Sutherland’s expertise is being used to design future education and health policies.
Next steps
The Fellowship inspired Dr Sutherland to embrace her research career. She secured another Medical Research Future Fund Fellowship to conduct school-based research on nutrition and physical activity.
‘It’s been lovely to be able to pursue various interests focused on implementation and scale up research. The NHMRC Fellowship really cemented that I wanted the academic research career path but with a research translation focus,’ said Dr Sutherland.
Dr Sutherland is now conducting national scale-up trials to support parents to pack healthy school lunchboxes via embedding the program into existing school communication apps.
‘I’m sure that the transferable nature of implementation science to other priority health issues will provide big benefits into the future.’
CIA
Dr Rachel Sutherland
Institution
University of Newcastle
Research title
A randomised trial of an intervention to facilitate the implementation of evidence based secondary school physical activity practices
Team
Dr Libby Campbell
Professor John Wiggers
Associate Professor Nicole Nathan
Professor Luke Wolfenden
Professor David Lubans
Professor Philip Morgan
Dr Matthew Tepi McLaughlin
Grant information
$179,118.00
2018–2020
Translating Research into Practice Fellowships