Building Momentum: Establishing robust policies to promote physical activity in primary healthcare

Background: Physical activity (PA) is essential to promote and maintain good physical and mental health, but many individuals do not meet recommendations. Policies that support physical activity promotion (PAP) within primary healthcare (PHC) settings are a key tenet of a comprehensive, systems-wide approach to increase PA and help prevent and manage many NCDs, including cancers. The fourth Building Momentum report sets out the emerging evidence for the benefits of promoting PA in PHC, and explains why designing and enacting such policies is good for individual health and economies. This report uniquely offers a global perspective on policy developments.

Policy Components: Currently, many countries lack policies on delivering PA interventions in PHC, despite evidence for effectiveness. Governments can use policy to encourage PA, taking action across multiple sectors to target where we live, learn, work and play. Our report outlines processes necessary for successful policy development, including: using evidence, building partnerships and shared policy objectives between stakeholders; and the importance of local contexts and an equity-in-all-policies approach to reduce barriers to participation.

Evaluation: Research, writing and publication were managed by WCRF International. A literature review evaluated current evidence and policies, and interviews were conducted with subject-matter experts.
The report had two rounds of review, including by interviewees, PA experts, WCRF Network colleagues and Policy Advisory Group, and WHO.

Conclusions: Well-designed policy on PAP in PHC is a key opportunity to improve the short- and long-term health and wellbeing of populations. Some regions have seen an increase in countries with national protocols on PA in PHC, while others have decreased. With NCDs annually accounting for 41 million deaths globally, there is an urgent need for policies to help people to be more active—PAP promotion in PHC is an important tool in achieving this.

Practical Implications/Funding:The authors declare no competing interests or funding.