The Fitness Industry Association (FIA) has announced the launch of a national campaign aimed at inspiring and enabling an additional one million people to be more active in their local communities.

More Active 4 Life is a sub-brand of the government's national £275m Change 4 Life campaign, which is also designed to increase physical activity levels and improve eating habits, especially in the 50 per cent of the population that are expected to be clinically obese by 2050. Both these campaigns will launch in January 2009, however More Active 4 Life will run a concentrated three month campaign in the summer consisting of a range of events and initiatives inside and outside of the gym. In the meantime, the FIA hopes its members will start a "grassroots movement in the lead up to the Summer campaign" using the promotional material and the brand to arrange their own events from January.

Minister of state for public health, Dawn Primarolo, said: "Working together we can ensure that people grow up healthy by increasing their understanding of the simple relationship between how much they eat, how much they exercise, and if they get the balance wrong." Fred Turok, chair of the FIA, added: "Being one of the government's key delivery partners, we believe that its Change 4 Life campaign can start to turn this public health juggernaut around.

"Nearly 50 per cent of the population are currently not active enough to derive any health benefits from it and this is the very population we will be targeting. Inactivity is a major factor contributing to obesity and many other lifestyle related diseases. The campaign will reach out to the morbidly inactive 50 per centers and help people who currently do no physical activity, to develop and sustain an interest in their own physical wellbeing."