Background: Slovenian children are facing considerable health challenges from the rapid social changes that influence their opportunity to engage in daily physical activity.
Objective: To overlay the social changes to the established Report Card model as a means of contextualising the extreme changes in physical activity and fitness observed over several years.
Methods: Benchmarks were graded for 10 core indicators, plus two (Sleep, Seasonal Variations). Active Healthy Kids Slovenia members met (predominantly via zoom) liaising with team leader(s) on a flexible, individual basis, based on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) regulations, over the ∼2-year assessment period of the project. Data were separated to the years prior to, 'pre' 2018-2020, and 'during' the global pandemic (2020-2021). Where sufficient data existed for both timeframes, grades were averaged to produce an overall grade.
Results: Grade results are expressed as pre/during/final grade, where the final grade (bolded) is a straight average of the two preceding time epochs: Overall Physical Activity (A-/A-/A-), Organized Sport and Physical Activity (C+/C/C), Active Play (D/C+/C), Active Transport (C/INC/C), Sedentary Behaviour (B/C/C+), Physical Fitness (A+/A-/A), Family and Peers (B+/INC/B+), Schools (A/A/A), Community and Environment (A+/A+/A+), Government (A/F/D), Sleep (D-/INC/D-), Seasonal Variations (D/C-/D+).
Conclusion: Although Slovenia has some of the most consistently physically-active children in the world, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic exerted significant reductions in physical activity opportunities, and especially when coupled with funding re-distributions, resulted in the steepest decline of child physical fitness observed within the >35-year history of Slovenia's well-established national fitness surveillance system.
© 2023 The Society of Chinese Scholars on Exercise Physiology and Fitness. Published by Elsevier (Singapore) Pte Ltd.