Partnering with schools and teachers to integrate HIIT into the curriculum represents a potentially scalable and sustainable way to equip adolescents with the understanding that a personal exercise habit for holistic wellbeing need not be based on high duration commitment.
In an Aotearoa New Zealand context, with an underpinning of a mātauranga Māori enhanced approach, there may be an option that provides a unique combination of potency, palatability, practicality, and translatability to reach our youth in a school environment.
This study aims to contribute to a reduction in mental health problems of adolescents by determining the effects of embedding a mātauranga Māori enhanced, teacher-delivered HIIT programme within the school health and physical education (PE) curriculum in socioeconomically deprived neighbourhoods.
The research also seeks to determine the potential for its broader implementation via determination of the overall acceptability of such an approach to participant students, their schools, and the teachers involved in its delivery.