School recess plays a crucial role in promoting physical activity, contributing up to 44% of children’s physical activity during school days. Yet with rising global temperatures, extreme heat poses a growing barrier to outdoor activity in schoolyards.

Shade—whether from trees or structures—may help offset thermal discomfort, but its role in sustaining physical activity levels under hot conditions is an understudied topic.

To better understand these dynamics, Lanza and colleagues (2022) examined how ambient temperature and shade availability affect children’s moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in schoolyards.

The study, conducted at three elementary schools in Austin, Texas, examined MVPA and locations of 213 children aged 8-10. Accelerometers and GPS monitors were used during recess in the fall of 2019, with temperatures ranging from 11 °C to 35 °C (53-96 °F).

Findings from this study are especially relevant for school administrators, public health officials, and urban planners aiming to create heat-resilient environments that promote children’s health and well-being in a warming climate.

A child-friendly neighborhood supports the fundamental needs of children’s daily lives and promotes their physical, emotional, and social development.

However, parents’ perception of a neighborhood as child-friendly can influence where they choose to live and how comfortable they feel letting their children play outside or move around on their own. These choices affect children’s physical activity, which directly impacts their health and well-being.

To understand these choices, researcher Xiaoli Gong set out in her PhD project to develop a new instrument that measures how parents in the Netherlands perceive a neighborhood’s child-friendliness.

She also explored how these perceptions influence parents’ housing choices and children’s physical activity.

This brief summarizes key findings from Gong’s publications from 2024 and 2025, offering valuable insights for urban planners, designers, researchers, and professionals focused on child-friendly environments.

The findings can inform the planning of interventions to create more child-friendly neighborhoods that promote children’s physical activity and health.

Playgrounds offer numerous health benefits, serving as spaces for physical activity, social interaction, stress relief, and motor skill development. However, not all communities have equal access, and distance from home can significantly impact how often families visit and use them.

To explore this, Young and colleagues (2023) surveyed 1350 adults at 60 public playgrounds across 10 U.S. cities during the summer of 2021. Their study examined whether distance to the playground from their home was associated with visit frequency, length of stay, and mode of transportation.

By understanding these patterns, city planners and public health officials can design more accessible and better-connected public play spaces to encourage outdoor physical activity and improve community well-being.

Research shows that school playgrounds are important for children’s health and development. However, tweens (children aged 9–12) have been an overlooked group in playground research.

To investigate how to build attractive playgrounds for tweens, a study by Amholt and colleagues (2024) investigated WHERE tweens are most active in playgrounds, WHAT they do when they use them, and WHY they prefer certain play equipment or play types. 

The authors investigated four school playgrounds and used device-based measures of physical activity and location, structured observation, and group interviews to understand tweens’ playground behavior.

A total of 474 tweens wore so-called ‘activity trackers’, 991 tweens were counted in the observations, and 56 participated in interviews.

This brief summarizes key insights from the study and provides valuable considerations in motivating tweens to use school playgrounds.

It is relevant not only for playground designers but also for school leaders and teachers.

Active outdoor play is crucial for children’s health and development, and playgrounds in public open spaces, such as parks or community areas, provide an ideal space for it.

However, the importance of these playgrounds’ use for health and well-being is still unclear.

As part of the World Playground Research Institute’s comprehensive scoping review conducted in 2024*, 55 studies related to playgrounds in public open spaces were extracted from all published research on playground use and its health benefits for children.

The aim was to create a clearer and more detailed overview of public playgrounds’ impact on children’s well-being.

In this brief, we summarize key insights from the scoping review, aiming to guide health authorities, city planners, and policymakers in making informed decisions about investments and designs in the area of public open spaces.

It also supports researchers in identifying areas for future research needs.

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*Schipperijn, J., Madsen, C. D., Toftager, M., Nørager Johansen, D. L., Lousen, I., Amholt, T. T., & Pawlowski, C. (2024). The role of playgrounds in promoting children’s health – a scoping review. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 21, Article 72. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-024-01618-2