Active School Thailand

Active School Thailand

Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University

Project Title:

Active School Thailand

Researcher (s):

Piyawat Katewongsa
Panya Choolers
Chutima Yousomboon

Active School Thailand project was designed to increase physical activity and reduce screen time and sedentary behaviour of Thai children which affect the learning process and school children’s development in the participating schools.

The project is currently on the 3rd year of implementation, with 120 schools are involved in different model and stages of implementation. The project is now undertaking the monitoring and effectiveness analysis of the program on the five dimension of children’s development including physical, emotional, social, communication skills, cognitive and their academic performance.

The results found that, as a comprehensive approach that involves all the school’s components, Active School Thailand project has been able to improve children’s physical activity level and reduce their sedentary behaviour and screen time as expected. In addition, Active School Thailand model also improved school children’s happiness; whereas children in the Active school model exhibited a higher score of happiness compared to their counterparts in the control group.

In addition, the projects also develop several innovations both in terms of tools for monitoring children’s behavior and analytical softwares to support the research procedures. The highlighted product of the project is the social innovation entitled 4PC as a model that appropriate for Thailand context and can be scaled-up at national level.

Applied Research Project to Usage:
•   Being used in the pilot schools

Publication:
•   Published academic papers and presented in the international conference.
•   The Active School Thailand model was included in the WHO Report as success story.
•   Presented to the policy makers who are related to healthy school program in Thailand

Key Contact Person:
Asst.Prof. Dr.Piyawat Katewongsa
Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University
+668 7545 9998
piyawat.kat@mahidol.edu