Introduction by Croakey: Several new resources for those with an interest in promoting physical activity were launched at the 7th International Society for Physical Activity and Health Congress in London this week.
England now has new physical activity guidelines for adults with disabilities, which were co-created with people living with disabilities (read more here).
The launch of these guidelines prompted Distinguished Professor Billie Giles-Corti, leader of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Liveable Communities, to tweet: “Australia needs to do the same”.
Also launched was We are Moving Medicine, an initiative by the Faculty of Sport & Exercise Medicine in partnership with Public Health England and Sport England. It helps clinicians, hospitals and patients “to spread the word about the remarkably positive effects that just a little bit of movement can have on the symptoms of many common diseases.”
The conference also heard that 22,000 healthcare professionals have been trained through Public Health England’s Physical Activity Clinical Champion Programme.
And the World Health Organization launched to help implementation of physical activity policies, following the launch in June of its Global Action Plan on Physical Activity.
Warm thanks to Dr Bill Bellew for providing outstanding coverage of the conference via @WePublicHealth. See a selection of his tweets here (see week of 15 October).
Many thanks also to Dr Justin Varney, the National Strategic Advisor on Health and Work at Public Health England (and described in one of Billew’s conference tweets as “perhaps the best PA Policy Entrepreneur in the world”), for allowing us to cross-publish his reflection on the conference.
Justin Varney writes:
Back in 2016 in a hot and humid Bangkok at the end of an energetic and inspiring conference, England agreed to host the 2018 International Congress on Physical Activity and Health.
Two years later, over 1,200 delegates from over 69 different countries have come together in London to share, learn and celebrate the journey so far and look to the challenges ahead.
Led by a partnership between Public Health England, ISPAH (International Society for Physical Activity and Health), Sport England and supported by WHO and HEPA Europe, the conference has really reflected the diversity and vibrancy of the global action to address inactivity.
So from a packed agenda of inspirational speakers, e-poster presentations and conversations in the corridors what stood out for me?
The narrative has changed
First the narrative has changed – in 2018 we are no longer begging for people to understand that physical activity is important to population health, that argument has been clearly set out by WHO in the Global Action Plan on Physical Activity and the call is clear – BE ACTIVE, Everybody, Everywhere, Everyday.
Two years on from Bangkok, the discussion and the narrative is now firmly in the, how do we accelerate pace and implement the existing evidence base?
In her keynote, the global power influencer Professor Fiona Bull set out the call to action for delegates to help us move from talking about the issue to implementing the evidence base at scale across every nation and every community around the world.
Integration
The second theme that stood out was healthcare integration.
We have known for over a decade that brief advice by healthcare professionals on physical activity creates a demonstrable impact on patient levels of physical activity.
At ISPAH2018 we saw a suite of excellent presentations, including one from England and one from Scotland, showing how this can be integrated at scale into healthcare systems and this definitely gave hope of more whole system approaches to embedding this into business as usual practice in the clinical world.
This was further strengthened by sessions highlighting the issues and opportunities of physical activity in different disease conditions. There were presentations on physical activity in the context of multiple sclerosis, diabetes, stroke and cancer among others and many more poster presentations in similar spaces.
The clear health connection was most powerfully made by the attendance of the English Secretary for State for Health, Rt. Hon Matt Hancock, who in a phenomenally busy parliamentary day dominated by Brexit, kept his personal commitment to launch the Moving Medicine programme.
Moving Medicine is a fantastic example of how a small amount of funding can kick start a step change in approach. The free resources have been co-produced with front line healthcare professionals as well as their professional bodies and embedded within the reality of daily clinical practice.
The tools provide clinicians with simple ways to integrate conversations of two minutes or five minutes into daily interactions with patients tailored to different conditions and common patient symptoms.
What is truly inspiring about the approach is the way the Faculty for Sport & Exercise Medicine has worked across specialty boundaries with other medical and nursing colleges and specialisms and with a broad church of disease focused charity partners, realising the benefits of partnership and building on lived experience to make a tool that really works in real life.
These were great examples of translating evidence into practice for every day clinical business.
Smart evaluation
The third was that evaluation is getting smarter and more embedded into programmes of activity.
There was a strong thread through the conference of the role of technology both in monitoring and evaluating impact and as a vehicle/vector for behaviour change.
The poster sessions particularly demonstrated the growth of evaluation as a key part of programme development, including celebration of the PHE/UKActive partnership Promising Practice, where there was demonstrated improvement in evaluation methodology and cultural shift in the physical activity sector linked to an investment in training and awareness raising, as well as building better relationships between academics and practitioners.
The examples that really stuck with me were the dynamic ways in which mapping and GPS technology was being used to influence the urban planning and design sector to think differently and seeing the benefits of active design in terms and benefits that they understand.
Enabling technology
Technology is not the silver bullet answer, but it’s a great enabler!
Evaluation is also evolving in that we are getting better at considering the needs and focus of commissioners and different federal and state departments who make the key policy decisions.
Evaluations increasingly are broadening to reflect business productivity impact, air pollution and congestion outcomes as well as direct health benefits. The policy sessions reiterated that this is fundamental to embedding a whole system approach across policy.
There were also real conversations about the challenges of growing urban living and the reality of ever increasing housing density and the domination of the car as an aspirational brand, a point highlighted in Professor Richard Wilkinson’s keynote on inequalities.
Changing the conversation for people with disability
The final, and perhaps the most important personally, was the fantastic visibility of disability inclusion issues across the conference.
The launch of the new Chief Medical Officer infographic and evidence report on physical activity for disabled adults is groundbreaking and a potential game changer.
There are 11.5 million disabled people in England and nearly half (42 percent) of them are inactive per week compared to 21 percent of those with no disability, a two-fold difference.
However, four in five disabled people report they would like to do more physical activity, highlighting continued barriers that prevent them from being active.
As a society we are fundamentally disabling people from taking part in physical activity – and this is more than just the physical barriers for wheelchair access, we are blocking their aspiration with paternalistic messages to rest and reframe from activity. So it is great to see this infographic as a first step in changing this conversation…
Throughout the conference in presentations and in questions from the floor the issue of disability inclusion was a consistent thread – including a question to the Secretary of State for Health on the inconsistency of launching a new resource to encourage activity in people with long term conditions through clinicians, and a welfare system that potentially penalises them for getting engaged in physical activity – one he recognised and said he was actively responding to with his colleagues.
So as the conference comes to an end this afternoon and many people return to their normal days, I hope they return inspired, energised and recharged with hope that we can turn the tide of inactivity and create a more active future for everyone!
• Dr Justin Varney is the National Strategic Advisor on Health and Work at Public Health England. His article was first published here. Also, read his previous articles on economic inequality and inactivity: parts 1 and 2.