Observational StudyMotivated to Move: A Study to Determine the Feasibility of Self-Monitoring Physical Activity in Youth

Children with a medical condition don't get enough exercise, which can lead to even more health problems in childhood and adulthood. To help patients be more active, the McMaster Children's Hospital has an Exercise Medicine Clinic, where kids with any medical condition can get help from doctors and exercise specialists to safely become more active. The Exercise Medicine Clinic works with kids that have arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, cancer, diabetes, and a lot of other conditions. So far, most of the kids that go to the Exercise Medicine Clinic show improved fitness levels, but other kids don't seem to improve at all. These differences in improvements probably relate to how much physical activity the patients do on a regular basis. What is not known is exactly how to motivate the patients to be more active. In the Motivated to Move study, the investigators are going to learn more about how technology can be used to help kids feel more motivated to be active. The purpose of the Motivated to Move study is to see if it's feasible for patients to use step trackers over a 6-month period as part of the care patients receive at the Exercise Medicine Clinic. The results from the study will be used to see how the step tracking worked and to design a larger study that compares motivation to be physically active between children who wear and don't wear step trackers.