Pilot Evaluation of a Walking School Bus Program

December 4, 2013 updated by: Jason Mendoza, Seattle Children's Hospital

Pilot and Feasibility Evaluation of a Walking School Bus Program Intervention for Elementary School Students

Walking to school is one of the objectives for children and adolescents in Healthy People 2010 and in previous studies was associated with higher levels of overall physical activity, which has been shown to decrease obesity. Therefore, more children walking to school should result in increased physical activity and presumably reduce obesity. However, increasing child pedestrian activity could increase the risk of child pedestrian injuries. Walking with an adult who provides instruction in pedestrian skills and monitors the child's actual behavior may be the most important component of a successful intervention. Walking with an adult reduced child pedestrian injury risk by almost 70%. A walking school bus (WSB) addresses safety concerns by providing a period of physical activity supervised by several responsible adults and teaching opportunities around pedestrian safety skills on the way to and from school. Children may join the WSB at various points along the set route. Despite the growing popularity of WSB programs in the United States, randomized, controlled-studies are lacking that examine the impact on children's safety, physical activity, and health. We seek to help fill this gap in the literature by piloting a WSB program in elementary schools in the Houston Independent School District to test feasibility. We hypothesize that a WSB program will: (1) increase the number of students walking to school and decrease the number of students driven to school by car, (2) increase students' pedestrian safety behaviors (3) increase students' physical activity, and (4) decrease students' excess weight gain.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

149

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Texas
      • Houston, Texas, United States, 77030
        • Baylor College of Medicine

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

8 years to 12 years (Child)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • 4th grade student at a study school in the Houston Independent School District
  • Must be physically able to walk to and from school

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Any condition that would prevent the student from walking to or from school

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Prevention
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: I
Walking School Bus Intervention
Behavioral: Walking School Bus
Students are chaperoned to and from school by adults (study staff or parent volunteers) along set routes.
Other Names:
  • Safe Routes to School
No Intervention: C
Usual school procedures for student transportation to school

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Method of student transportation to school
Time Frame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Immediately pre- and post-intervention

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Physical activity
Time Frame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Physical activity objectively measured by accelerometers.
Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Pedestrian crosswalk behavior
Time Frame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Parents' psychosocial constructs related to allowing their child to walk to school
Time Frame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Child's self-efficacy for walking to school
Time Frame: Immediately pre- and post-intervention
Immediately pre- and post-intervention

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Seattle Children's Hospital

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Jason A Mendoza, MD, MPH, Seattle Children's Research Institute

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

September 1, 2008

Primary Completion (Actual)

June 1, 2009

Study Completion (Actual)

June 1, 2009

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 22, 2008

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 23, 2008

First Posted (Estimate)

September 25, 2008

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

December 6, 2013

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

December 4, 2013

Last Verified

December 1, 2013

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 1R21CA133418-01 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)
  • 163773

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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