Our New 3D Animation Physical Activity Project for Kids

The Just Dance Crew is our new innovative Public Health Tech project that uses 3D animation to promote physical activity and exercise in children by teaching them to perform short dancercise (dance + exercise) routines. We’re using animation because research has shown that children engage more with animated characters and we’re focusing on dance because it is a fun way to get children active. Additionally, research shows that dance has a number of health benefits: it’s an excellent form of exercise, improves fitness, leads to weight loss, strengthens bones and muscles, is beneficial to mental health and improves social skills.

The routines will be 1-5 minutes long and will focus on cardiovascular exercise; muscle and bone strengthening; and flexibility and relaxation exercises. The routines can fit into both the school and home environment. At school, the videos can be used during devotional, at breaks and over lunchtime. While at home, children and parents can use the videos during their leisure time and the whole family can get involved creating a fun, family experience.

Current Progress and Next Steps

So far we have created two demo animations focusing on a simple muscle strengthening exercise – squats – as a proof of concept and towards the end of 2020, we’ll be working with the Ministry of Education to develop more animations as part of a pilot project to test the effectiveness of this approach.

After the pilot, we will conduct a thorough analysis of the project and our plan is to then use the evaluation of the pilot to inform our next phase which will be to create a comprehensive collection of animations and develop an online learning platform to disseminate the videos.

We will also create educational material, guides and lesson plans for both teachers and parents to ensure the videos are used effectively. The videos will be easily accessed by teachers, to use in the classroom, or parents, through the internet or they can be downloaded and saved on to any device. Through the learning platform teachers, parents and guardians will be able to evaluate children’s progress with respect to their technique, consistency and their recall of the benefits of different types of exercise.

The Impact of Our Project

We hope that through this project, we can tackle childhood obesity in our local (St Kitts and Nevis) and regional (the Caribbean) area.

Childhood obesity is a challenge in the Caribbean with 1 in 3 children being overweight or obese. The rate of childhood obesity in the Caribbean is higher than the global average and is on the rise. Being obese and overweight in childhood is linked to several conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, and it negatively impacts a child’s mental health.

Childhood obesity is also a significant challenge in St Kitts and Nevis. A PAHO report revealed that 33% of secondary school children in the twin-island state were overweight and 14% were obese. In 2017, a UNICEF report published that 26% of children in St Kitts and Nevis are obese. Being overweight and obese puts children at an increased risk of developing NCDs which are becoming an epidemic in the Federation with 83% of deaths being due to NCDs.

To combat childhood obesity, we must ensure that children adopt a healthy lifestyle and one approach is to get more children participating in exercise or physical activity. This is a priority as the Ministry of Health has reported that 58.4% of teenagers in St Kitts and Nevis are physically inactive.

We believe our project offers a simple, inexpensive and fun option for schools to get children active and teach important aspects of PE.