Our Impact

Impact

The JU:MP programme engaged 30,000 children within the eight neighbourhoods between 2018 and 2025. Our world-leading research has demonstrated that “at a population level”, the work in these neighbourhoods has significantly improved children’s minutes of MVPA activity, reduced time spent inactive, and addressed physical activity inequality for children living in deprived areas and for children of South Asian heritage. Our qualitative research with nearly 100 children has highlighted that the JU:MP whole system approach has helped build a positive relationship for many children with physical activity. A summary of the research is outlined below.

Evidence that the JU:MP approach increases children’s physical activity levels, reduces inactivity and tackles physical activity inequality.

For the last five years JU:MP has been hosted within Born in Bradford, an internationally recognised research programme within the Bradford Institute for Health Research (BTHFT). From the outset, using and generating research and evidence has been core to the JU:MP whole system approach and has enabled us to understand the outcomes and impacts of the programme. One part of the JU:MP evaluation work has been to undertake a world-first study to evaluate the effect of the JU:MP whole system approach upon children’s physical activity. A short report of the research and findings can be found in appendix 4.

In brief, over 1,500 children within the JU:MP area and outside of the JU:MP area (mainly living other areas of West and South Yorkshire; the control group) were invited to take part in the study. Physical activity levels were measured using activity monitors called accelerometers before the JU:MP programme began and then two years later. When the two groups were compared, we found that children in the JU:MP area had 4.9 minutes more daily health enhancing moderate-to-vigorous physical (MVPA) activity compared to the control group. The effect was larger on weekdays, with a difference of +5.77 minutes/day. There was also a significant effect of JU:MP on average daily sedentary time (inactivity), with a difference of -8.69 minutes/day between the JU:MP group and control group. The effect was larger on weekends with a difference of -21.47 minutes/day between groups. We also found that the JU:MP programme was more effective for children from ethnic minority groups, thus reducing physical activity inequalities.

We have also looked at our accelerometry data in terms of the Sport England categories of ‘less active’, ‘fairly active’ and ‘active’; please note, this can not be directly compared to Active Lives questionnaire data because of the mode of data collection (objective vs subjective) and because of the different age profiles between the two samples.

Table 2: Changes in Physical Activity Levels from Baseline to Follow-Up

At follow-up, both the Control and Intervention groups showed a decline in the proportion of participants classified as “Active”, with a greater decrease in the Control group compared to the Intervention group. Conversely, the proportion of “Less Active” participants (<30 min/day) increased more sharply in the Control group than in the Intervention group. These trends suggest that the intervention helped stop the decline in high activity levels and prevented a larger increase in inactivity.

The effects reported in the control trial, to our knowledge, are bigger than any other long-term, population level physical activity intervention for children reported in the scientific literature; they demonstrate the substantial public health impact of the JU:MP whole-system approach within multi-ethnic, socially and economically deprived communities. Moreover, evidence shows that children who are more active, become more active adolescents and adults, so creating these improvements in childhood is likely to lead to improvements in lifelong physical activity engagement. Our findings not only reinforce the value of the JU:MP whole-system approach in Bradford, but also advocate for place-based whole-system approaches to be deployed nationally as per Sport England’s place-partnership approach and offer a successful and effective example for other localities to learn from.

Our control trial is currently undertaking a 36 month follow-up. The JU:MP programme had a two year intensive phase followed by a six month embed and sustain phase. The 36 month data collection will allow us to examine how well sustained the changes in children’s physical activity are once most of the intensive resource has been withdrawn and the system is self-sustaining.

Evidence that the JU:MP approach promotes positive physical activity experiences for children and young people.

To better understand the experiences for children and young people, our research team undertook a process evaluation of the JU:MP programme. This involved 12 focus groups with 93 participating children, seven focus groups with 17 parents across two different time points, and 19 dyad interviews (with both child and a parent), with seven families across three timepoints.

Through these sessions we gathered an insight into families’ views and experiences of JU:MP intervention. Their views demonstrate the positive physical activity experiences for children and young people facilitated through JU:MP intervention. This is mostly owed to the expanded range of physical and social opportunities for children to be physically active, suiting diverse needs and interests of children and skilful facilitation of physical activity provision.

Evidence shows that all of the individual JU:MP workstreams may increase children’s physical activity somewhat, but above all what we have embedded is a joined up whole system focusing on physical activity; the power of the connections between the workstreams and across the neighbourhoods has been the key to the outstanding results that we have achieved. JU:MP is committed to supporting children and families to live physically active lives and would like to continue and deepen this work in the next phase.

Research paper pre print:  The Effectiveness of a Whole System Approach to Improve Physical Activity of Children Aged 5 to 11 Years Living in Multi-ethnic and Socio-economically Deprived Communities: A Controlled Before and After Trial | medRxiv