Multisector,
collaborative effort needed to combat physical inactivity
Newswise, August 2, 2016 — Greater
efforts should be made to actively monitor physical activity as a risk factor
in clinical practice, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington
University in St. Louis.
The paper “Scaling up Physical Activity Interventions Worldwide: Stepping
up to Larger and Smarter Approaches to Get People Moving,” is part of a four-paper
series published in The Lancet, which shows, among other findings,
that physical inactivity costs the global economy more than $67.5 billion a
year in health care costs and lost productivity.
Increasing levels of physical
activity will require collaboration between schools, urban planning, transport,
sports and recreation and the environmental sectors, finds the paper.
“Not every intervention implemented
at scale is effective in increasing population physical activity levels, and
not every effective, research-led intervention is scalable,” said Rodrigo Reis, professor at the Brown School and co-author
of the study.
“We found that the key factors for
scaling-up physical activity interventions are drawn from lessons from both
evidence-based practice and practice based-evidence,” Reis said.
“The key factors include
partnerships outside the health sector, early institutionalization and
long-term political support of effective interventions.”
Reis and his co-authors pointed to
several successful examples, such as the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System
introduced in Curitiba, Brazil; Bogota, Colombia; and Cambridge, United Kingdom,
which puts stops further apart than traditional bus stops to encourage walking;
and the Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH) in the United States,
which promotes a healthy school environment including physical activity, food,
nutrition and sun protection.
“The scientific community,
researchers, funding agencies and journals should prioritize studies for
assessing impact of real-world interventions,” Reis said.
“And governments should focus on
scaling-up interventions with the highest face validity, promote multisector
approaches and provide long-term tangible support.”
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