Back pain in young adults
Half of all adults aged 18-35 now experience back pain. The cost to society is around £12.3 billion a year. As Acting CEO of BackCare I fronted new research for the ‘Can You Feel My Pain?‘ campaign linking it to…
Category Back pain in children
Back pain in children is on the rise, mostly because we still require them to carry around 20% of their bodyweight to and from school every day
BBC News: School bags ’cause back pain’
Rucksacks loaded with school books have been linked to higher levels of back pain in a study of Spanish school children. The findings, reported in Archives of Disease in Childhood, said many pupils had “excessively loaded” backpacks. This was linked…
The 360 degree flexible classroom
One of the highlights of my time at the Design Council was producing the 360 degree flexible classroom as the centrepiece of the Schools Renaissance campaign. This is what the Observer made of it. “Inside a dingy-looking prefab hut near…
Posture, children and heavy schoolbags
Did you know that children carry around 20% of their bodyweight to and from school? Or that children are exempted from Health and Safety Executive covering the design of the furniture that they use? As a result, we are presently…
Is your child’s heavy schoolbag harming their health?
As it’s revealed many youngsters haul half their body weight… Is your child’s school bag harming their spine? By Louise Atkinson PUBLISHED: 02:59, 15 May 2012 | UPDATED: 10:09, 15 May 2012 1st 4lb: Rachel Purvis, ten, is carrying 28…
Are you sitting comfortably?
As Chair of the charity Pain UK, and as a former trustee and (interim) CEO of the national charity BackCare, I have spent many years campaiging to improve children’s physical wellbeing at school. I wrote this article for Century 21 Schools…