Active parent, active youth: exploring parent and child physical activity in Youth with Cystic Fibrosis

Background: Physical activity (PA) is known to positively affect health, particularly in people with chronic respiratory diseases such as Cystic fibrosis (CF), where it can attenuated deterioration in pulmonary function and reduce hospitalizations. However, youth with CF (YwCF) seem to be less active compared to healthy peers, so health benefits are missed. Given the major impact of parents in shaping children’s health behaviours and the established positive association between parent and child PA levels in the healthy population, understanding this association in CF could reveal potential intervention components to stimulate YwCF to be (more) active.
Purpose: To investigate the association between parental support, parent PA and child PA levels among YwCF.
Methods: YwCF between 6 and 17 years old and their parents were eligible to participate. Participants were asked to wear an ActiGraph GT3X-BT for 7 consecutive days. Raw accelerometer data were processed by GGIR package in R. Additionally, parental support was assessed through a questionnaire. Correlations and multiple linear regressions for MVPA and total PA were conducted in R.
Results: In this study, 26 parent-child dyads are included (58% girls, 11.2 years, FEV1 88%; 77% mothers, 39 years). Parent MVPA and total PA are positively correlated with child MVPA and total PA (Rs=0.45,p=0.02; Rs=0.55,p=0.004). Furthermore, the regression models for MVPA and total PA were significant (AdjR2=0.24,p=0.09;AdjR2=0.36,p=0.03), with both parent MVPA (p=0.005) and total PA (p=0.002) as only positive significant predictors of child PA behaviour. No significant results were found for parental support.
Conclusions and Practical implications: Preliminary results stipulate that in CF, similar to the healthy population, active parents are associated with active youth. These results inform the development process of future PA interventions in YwCF suggesting PA education of the parents and increasing parent PA levels as potential intervention components to explore.
Funding: No funding.