A “whole child” initiative of quality physical activity: A way to go beyond the traditional boundaries of corporate social responsibility?

Introduction The alarming rise of childhood physical inactivity and obesity has increasingly led business enterprises to put emphasis on and proactively act for mitigating the obesity risk by promoting physical activity (PA) for children as a basis of lifelong PA adherence. Nevertheless, a discourse about PA merely linked to the obesity epidemic leads to a conceptualization of PA as mere means to ensure “energy balance”. This allows only a limited exploitation of the potential of PA promotion by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitments for the provision of children's rights to play and be physically active [1] . Instead worldwide, there is a call for “whole child” initiatives based on the assumption that PA is critical to educating the whole child [2] . The present project aims at the translation of this holistic view of child development through PA into local practices in a municipality in the Northern of Italy with the synergic involvement of actors from the public and private sectors: schools, families, municipality, regional administration, regional Olympic Committee, and corporate. Implemented project The main elements of this project of childhood PA promotion are: 1 – its multisectoral nature with formal agreements between the corporate, financially supporting the initiative, and policy representatives (i) making public concession of areas (municipality and regional administration), (ii) enrolling more than 80% of the preschool and elementary school population of the district (regional school office and schools), (iii) ensuring harmonization of this early educational project into the broader frame of initiatives of education though sport at regional and national level (regional Olympic Committee); 2 – the qualitative characteristics of the intervention, that are multicomponent PA content and delivery with interdisciplinary focus on rendering (i) physical education lessons cognitively challenging and (ii) classroom lessons physically engaging; 3 – the joint involvement of school generalist teachers, specialist teachers, and parents, with teacher training meetings and e-learning facilities tailored to ensure implementation fidelity; 4 – the involvement of local coordinators for each subgroup of actors as “interfaces” to ensure the effectiveness of the cascade process from planning to implementation and evaluation. Critical analysis The description of the positive and negative aspects of the project implementation and the identification of possible areas for improvement will be performed following the five-component RE-AIM model. that takes ecological and contextual factors into account: 1 – to what extent has the target population of children/parents been reached? (Reach); 2 – has the intervention had the expected beneficial outcomes without unintended negative consequences? (Effectiveness); 3 – how large is the proportion of schools, school personnel, children and parents willing to adopt the intervention? (Adoption); 4 – How consistently has the programme been delivered? (Implementation fidelity); 5 – to what degree may the programme ensure participants’ adherence in the long-term? And what are the perspectives for the program to become institutionalized? (Maintenance). Conclusion Recently from a CSR perspective, interest has emerged that moves from narrowly-defined shareholder benefits towards wide-reaching sustainable and shared benefits. A holistic view on child development through PA rather than a narrow view on energy expenditure should underlie any childhood PA promotion initiative. However, the achievement of the recommended PA levels and goals may be only partially pursued through services delivery as physical education or deliberate practice. Since a relevant portion of children's PA is spontaneous play, multisectoral strategies that impact the built environments and promote active play and commuting behaviours are also essential.