# Assessing the physical activity of parents of children suffering from cancer: a cross-sectional study

## TL;DR

Parents of children with cancer reduce their physical activity during treatment, which may affect their health and their child's activity levels.

## Contribution

This study is the first to investigate how a child's cancer treatment impacts the physical activity levels of their parents.

## Key findings

- Parents' physical activity levels significantly decreased during their child's cancer therapy.
- Parents reported new physical complaints and increased sitting time during treatment.
- Most parents expressed interest in participating in exercise programs during this period.

## Abstract

Regular physical activity (PA) is essential for biopsychosocial health, but reduced PA during therapy for childhood cancer increases the burden of long-term side effects. Cancer and its therapy determine the everyday life of affected families, and parents spend plenty of time with their child in the hospital. Thus, we assumed that the restriction of the movement environment affects the parents’ PA-behavior. Meanwhile, parents have a pronounced influence on their child’s PA-behavior. Therefore, we investigated self-reported PA and sitting time (ST) of parents before and during their child’s cancer therapy.

Forty parents provided their consent and participated in the study between September 2021 and February 2022. Parental PA and ST were reported before and during their child’s cancer therapy in a cross-sectional design using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF). The questionnaire was supplemented with questions dealing with attitude towards exercise, physical status of the parents and prerequisites for movement therapy. Analysis of variance was applied using IBM SPSS Statistics. The Ethics Committee of the University of Freiburg approved the study.

The self-reported parents’ PA-levels before their child’s diagnosis corresponded to reference values for healthy adults. During their child’s therapy, all reported dimensions of parental daily PA and the number of Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET)-minutes of PA per week decreased significantly. Especially during inpatient stays, PA declined (mean ± SD: from 3004.5 ± 2301.4 to 889.1 ± 1585.1; p < 0.001), with a significant increase in ST in minutes per workday (mean ± SD: from 329.3 ± 196.6 to 687.8 ± 268.8; p < 0.001). In addition, 45% of the parents reported about new physical complaints since their child’s cancer diagnosis and 92.5% could imagine taking part in an exercise program.

The findings of this retrospective, cross-sectional questionnaire study suggest that parental PA declines during a child’s cancer therapy. Nearly half of the parents reported new physical complaints since their child’s cancer diagnosis. To counteract these health hazards, future exercise programs in pediatric oncology should include parents to promote their own health and to enable them to act as role models for their children.

German Register of Clinical Trials No.: DRKS00026248, prospectively registered on 17/09/2021.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-025-25455-5.