ArticleHealth & place2021
How can an agent-based model explore the impact of interventions on children's physical activity in an urban environment?
Article in Health & place, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Agent-Based Modelling of Health Inequalities following the Complexity Turn in Public Health: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- What Makes Them Move? An Agent-Based Model of Childhood Physical Activity.Childhood obesity (Print) · 2026Article
- Leveraging agent-based modeling and a randomized intervention to advance childhood physical activity: A study protocol.PloS one · 2025Article
- Active School Commuting in School Children: A Narrative Review of Current Evidence and Future Research Implications.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Review
- A scoping review of complex systems methods used in population physical activity research: do they align with attributes of a whole system approach?Health research policy and systems · 2023Article
- Agent-based modeling of urban exposome interventions: prospects, model architectures, and methodological challenges.Exposome · 2022Article
- A scoping review of systems approaches for increasing physical activity in populations.Health research policy and systems · 2022Article
- Network Analysis for a Community-Based School- and Family-Based Obesity Prevention Program.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- A systems thinking approach to understanding youth active recreation.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Insufficient physical activity (PA) among most children and adolescents is a global problem that is undermining the realisation of numerous developmental and health benefits. The aim of this study was to explore the potential impact of interventions on PA by using an agent-based model (ABM) simulating children's daily activities in an urban environment. Three domains for interventions were explored: outdoor play, school physical education and active travel. Simulated interventions increased children's average daily moderate-to-vigorous PA by 2-13 min and reduced the percentage of children not meeting PA guidelines, from 34% to 10%-29%, depending on the intervention. Promotion of active travel and outdoor play benefited more those in a higher socio-economic position. Agents' interactions suggested that: encouraging activity in diverse groups will reduce percentage of the least active in the population; and initiating outdoor events in neighbourhoods can generate an enhancing effect on children's engagement in PA. The ABM provided measurable outcomes for interventions that are difficult to estimate using reductionist methods. We suggest that ABMs should be used more commonly to explore the complexity of the social-environmental PA system.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.