Written by Ashtyn Smith
Yousefian et al. (2009) states that youth living in rural areas are at a greater risk for physical inactivity and obesity. In the United States a national study took place and resulted in 16% of youth aged 6-19 years old are overweight. This seems to be even more evident for youth residing in rural environments . The promotion of active living and safer physical activity seem to be prominent in urbanized areas where they add sidewalks, bike paths, and easy access to parks and trails (Yousefian et al., 2009). Living within city limits makes means youth are more likely to have healthy amounts of physical activity and accessibility to transportation.
Machado-Rodrigues et al. (2014) hypothesized that whether youth are more physically active in rural vs urban communities depends distinctly on geographical location. Higher levels of obesity have been noted amongst adolescents in rural settings within the location of Canada, USA, and Spain yet China reports a higher level of obese youth in their urban populations.
“Physical Activity occurs in social contexts that have specific demands and constraints such as opportunities for walking, access to playgrounds, proximity to shopping centers, and so on” (Machado-Rodrigues et al., 2014, p. 119). Multiple studies have been done regarding the inactivity and obesity of youth in rural vs urban communities and the studies always vary with their statistics. It is all about what urban or rural communities offer for social services and means for a gym or fitness facility. For an example a small rural community about an hour northwest of Fredericton New Brunswick has a gym located approximately twenty minutes outside of town limits. We can hypothesize that a lot of the rural families are getting more physical activity because the services provided accommodates to their physical needs better than the services offered within town limits. The same goes for bigger urbanized areas. Geographically speaking, youth physical inactivity and obesity is going to vary depending on a variety of components. Some of the components that will effect adolescents and their behaviors towards physical activity and recreation and sports depends on influence of parents and other important adults, technology and screen time and easy access to facilities and transportation. These factors are all vital to the amount of physical activity youth would be getting in their day to day lives. The statistics from Oxford Academic Journal state that in Canada, adolescents in rural communities are more obese and receiving less physical activity because our cities are designed so hardly any accessibility to transportation services or sports camps extend past city limits (Machado-Rodrigues et al., 2012). In fact, parents who enroll their kid into a sport in the city of Fredericton and are outside of city limits have to pay an additional fee for different hockey and other sporting camps offered within the city of Fredericton. This fact alone has detrimental effects to lack of youth sport participation within rural areas. Income status also plays a role in youth participation for sports. Living costs are always higher in the cities, so its likely that higher percentages of poverty reside in rural areas compared to urban areas.
Loucaides, Plotnikoof, and Bercovitz (2007) found that Canadian youth living in rural and urban areas have similar physically active lifestyles, but urban communities are prominent. This is due to the multi-sector approach urban communities have with promotion to physical activity within family, school and community. Urban and rural youth have common correlations related to physical activity because a study found that despite the geographical location, numerous factors play into the statistics that 43% of youth in urban schools have physical activity in their day-to-day life where as rural school students only had a statistic of 38% for their physical activity range. These percentages differ due to the implications that gender does play a role. Girls are known to be less physically fit than males. Peers and siblings also play a role in how physically fit adolescents are. If youth grow up in a location where they can go play with their friends all the time, then this is going to create a healthier lifestyle for children versus a child growing up in an area where they have no one to toss a ball or go to the park with.
To conclude, urban vs rural communities differ in their statistics of adolescents’ physical inactivity and obesity ranges depending on social services, geographical location, income status, transportation/accessibility and influences within the home. In a perfect world, if everyone had the same home life, income and peer influences and we were specifically addressing urban vs rural location, then yes, urban communities are going to have better ranges of physical activity and health statistics because they are closer to facilities and have a wider range of activities, sports clubs and recreation programs for youth to participate in. Although this is not the case. There are so many families in urban and rural communities with different income levels, unsteady home lives and different peer influences and friend groups, therefore it does not matter how many times a survey study has been done, rates of obesity and physical inactivity will constantly teeter totter between the prominence of inactivity in urban or rural communities depending on all of the factors listed above. Taking into consideration all these factors (gender, income, peer and parental influence, facilities, transportation) yes, Canada seems to display a higher obesity rate in adolescents in rural communities.
References:
Loucaides, C. A., Plotnikoff, R. C., & Bercovitz, K. (2007). Differences in the correlates of physical activity between urban and rural Canadian youth. Journal of School Health, 77(4), 164-170.
Machado-Rodrigues, A. M., Coelho-E-Silva, M. J., Mota, J., Padez, C., Martins, R. A., Cumming, S. P., … & Malina, R. M. (2014). Urban–rural contrasts in fitness, physical activity, and sedentary behaviour in adolescents. Health promotion international, 29(1), 118-129.
Yousefian, A., Ziller, E., Swartz, J., & Hartley, D. (2009). Active living for rural youth: addressing physical inactivity in rural communities. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 15(3), 223-231.
Youth Development Through Recreation and Sport 