Gardening initiatives as an approach to cancer prevention for children and youth
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Gardening initiatives may be used to address modifiable risk factors for cancer from an early age. This review synthesizes evidence on the effects of gardening initiatives on modifiable cancer risk factors among school-aged children and youth. STUDY DESIGN: Rapid review. METHODS: A rapid review was conducted in March 2024 using databases (e.g., MEDLINE, PubMed), registers (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov), and other sources (e.g., Healthevidence.org, Google Scholar). Two reviewers independently screened and selected articles for inclusion, and one completed quality appraisal. Peer-reviewed studies from the past ten years on gardening initiatives in schools, daycares, or community settings in high-income countries were included. Studies had to report health outcomes for children and youth (aged 0-18 years) related to modifiable cancer risk factors including: nutrition behaviors, body weight, physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior, psychosocial factors, and ultraviolet ray (UVR) behaviors. RESULTS: This resulted in forty-eight included studies. Most measured outcomes related to nutrition behaviors, psychosocial factors, body weight, and PA. Fewer studies measured sedentary behavior, and none included UVR behaviors. Gardening initiatives generally led to positive nutrition behaviors (e.g., improved knowledge, dietary diversity), increased PA, decreased sedentary behavior, and improved psychosocial factors (e.g., depression, social cohesion). Effects on body weight and abdominal adiposity were inconclusive. CONCLUSIONS: Gardening initiatives in educational and community settings could help prevent cancer by improving diet, PA, and psychosocial health in children and youth. However, more rigorous, longitudinal studies are needed to better understand their effectiveness, mechanisms, and long-term impact on cancer prevention into adulthood.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".