ukactive CEO David Stalker looks ahead to this year’s ukactive National Summit

It’s hard to miss how far physical activity has risen up the political agenda over the last year. There’s now a government strategy, ‘Moving More, Living More’, which aims to do exactly what the title suggests. Public Health England’s Physical Activity Framework, launching later this month, will give advice and examples of good practice in designing physical activity back into everyday life to tackle the inactivity pandemic. And ukactive’s own Turning the Tide of Inactivity report has helped to keep the issue front of mind among decision-makers.

This year’s ukactive National Summit – which takes place on 13 November – will be the pinnacle of a year’s work in moving the debate on physical activity to the top of the government’s health agenda.

It offers us the chance to take stock of these developments and scrutinize the intentions of our political leaders regarding incorporating physical activity into their plans up to, and beyond, the General Election in 2015.

We went out on a limb at last year’s Summit and announced that, as a nation, we should have an ambition of nothing less than a 1 per cent year-on-year reduction in the level of inactivity – something we’d calculated would save taxpayers £1.2bn in just five years. And our statement had an immediate impact: at the Summit, Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham pledged to make “physical activity the cornerstone of Labour’s public health policy”.

Gathering evidence
But it’s critical to keep this momentum going, and for that to happen we need credible evidence and examples of good practice. This year we’ll therefore be revealing the findings of a recent ukactive Research Institute-led project that identified ‘good’ and ‘promising’ practice from a range of physical activity providers.

This will provide insights into what’s being done well and what needs to improve, as well as giving practical examples and advice on how we can most effectively get more people, more active, more often.

The response we got from our call for evidence was fantastic, with around 1,000 case studies submitted to us from all over the UK, making it one of the largest surveys of physical activity programmes ever carried out in England. Programmes submitted were wide-ranging in terms of activities offered, delivery settings, participation rates and target populations.

Most importantly, this survey also offers a valuable insight into the strength of the evidence base proving the effectiveness of programmes being run across the country. It will help other operators understand what they can improve/change to ensure their own programming is as effective as possible in getting people active for health.

This information is essential to ensure resources are concentrated in the right places, and to encourage the use of physical activity in the prevention and management of chronic diseases.

With the election on the horizon and physical activity policy gathering a head of steam, this is a chance to understand the national direction of activity policy and to walk away with evidence-based examples of how to get people active.