In hopes of preventing obesity from an early age, a research project called the Natural Learning Initiative is underway in cooperation with the College of Design, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s School of Public Health and the Emory University School of Public Health.

The project, headed by design professor Robin Moore, is just beginning as researchers prepare to assess preschool play areas.

“It’s an area we’ve been working on for several years. Here, at the College of Design, we design several systems. We have different models we have worked on for the last several years,” Moore said.

The project team hopes to promote behavioral change in children through environmental intervention.

After the researchers come up with a tool to assess the amount of physical activity a preschool play area encourages, they will begin to re-design an alternative, in which there will be less places for the children to sit and more for them to exert physical activity.

According to Moore, with good data, the team hopes to convince the Public Health people to create new policies. “I believe this is a good start,” Candi Jacobs, a freshman in communication and mother of five, said. “The next step should make less seating available to the parents because it’s their modeling that will do the teaching.” The research team consists of many people, including Moore and Nilda Cosco from N.C. State, Karen Mumford from Emory University, Linda Hestenes from UNC-G, Stewart Trost from Kansas University and many graduate and undergraduate students who have contributed to the project. Cosco, an education psychologist, is conducting a dissertation to research three Triangle play areas to find the connection between physical activity and the environment the children are in.

She said since there were no previous studies of playgrounds, the group is working to discover the type of environment that supports a greater type of physical activity.

“It’s so easy for kids to sit in front of the TV or computer all day with rising entertainment inventions. I think we’ve all forgotten how much fun it is to spend an afternoon in the park,” Kim Hartofelis, a freshman in communication, said. With a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the NLI conducted a statewide baseline survey of outdoor play areas for children and found that most of the play areas were not entertaining and uncomfortable for the children and staff, yet children attending 12-hour programs spend about 40 minutes a day in these areas.

Last fall, the National Institute of Environmental Health also awarded a grant to the NLI, in partnership with UNC Public Health. According to a report explaining NLI’s initiatives, “the objective [for the grant] is [to] identify discriminatory environmental items in preschool play areas to be included in a pilot tool that will rate their potential to produce physical activity when three- to five-year-old children are exposed to them.” In 2005, Moore, Cosco, Karen DeBord, Hestenes and Janet McGuinnis developed the Preschool Outdoor Environment Measurement Scale to help assess the factors that play a role in children’s development.

The NLI team is working on developing another tool like POEMS, but modified to assess the direct connection between preschoolers’ outdoor environments and physical activity. From the research conducted so far, results showed that the environment plays a big role in determining physical activity, especially for preschoolers, and that preschoolers who are active outdoors now will influence their preferences to participate in outdoor activities as adults. “We have to start teaching the behavior at a younger age, so they carry these ‘good habits’ into adulthood,” Jacobs said. “If we wait until they are adults, it’s a bit late, and we’ll have a lot of ‘back treading.'”

Moore pointed to early childhood experiences as being very influential to child development and brain development. Fifteen child care centers will be selected from respondents of the survey and these centers will range from a diversity of areas and socioeconomic groups.

The team will assess the areas after developing their tool, see what barriers exist in the play area, and how to design the area best to help prevent obesity.

Moore said the study is very observational and for ethical reasons, the children are not involved in the research, but everything is merely observed in hopes of achieving the common goal. For more information, visit: naturalearning.org.