Background: Foot ailments are common among schoolchildren, some of which may be attributed to wearing ill-fitting footwear. As schoolchildren often participate in athletic activity, they are doubly vulnerable to foot ailments, and are particularly vulnerable to conditions such as hallux valgus, Achilles tendonitis, athlete's foot, corns and calluses. Thus, there is an acute need for the design and manufacture of ergonomic footwear for this target group. While research on appropriate footwear for children has been carried out in relation to child populations in other societies, research on the circumstances of Sri Lankan schoolchildren is lacking. Neither the requisite design know-how nor the information for design is available to footwear manufacturers.
Objectives: This review of the literature is aimed at confirming the need for ergonomic footwear from the point of view of the effects of wearing ill-fitting shoes and at identifying the requirements in terms of design information, especially for schoolchildren of the age group five to ten years, to empower footwear manufacturers.
Methods: PubMed, Google scholar and Science Direct were used for the literature search.
Results: 208 publications were read in full, 94 of which are referenced in this review.
Conclusion: The review shows morphological measurements, behavior and activity patterns of schoolchildren and environmental conditions they are exposed to should be determined to formulate design information.
Keywords: Biomechanics; anatomy of footwear; foot anatomy; last design; morphology.