Making physical activity in the Netherlands as normal as brushing your teeth

Background: The Dutch government aims for 75% of the Dutch population to comply with the Physical Activity Guidelines by 2040. In 2023, only 44.3% did comply. With new policies, different approaches and clear knowledge needs, the Netherlands is tackling the ‘physical activity crisis’ on a national and local level. In short: physical activity should become as normal as brushing your teeth.

Program Delivery: The new national policy (2022) is committed to integral policymaking with other ministries, to make physical activity part of healthcare, education, living environment and work. This is done in a system approach by knowledge institutions, a national programme that focuses on scaling up great initiatives (Beweegalliantie) and many regional and local parties. The Knowledge Centre for Sports & Physical Activity NL will elaborate on the new policy and provide inspiring examples of knowledge transfer to practitioners as well, like the co-design of the PA Guidelines Cycle together with ambassadors for plain language.

Evaluation:
Half of the Dutch have annual contact with a healthcare professional about a health question. In many cases, practicing physical activity is part of the solution. There have been evaluations in the care setting, which show that a different set-up in terms of referral leads to more PA among people (Beweeghuis Maastricht). But are we getting closer to the 75% target? The first evaluation of the national policy will be available in 2024.

Conclusions: Long-term sports policy and learning approach is needed to ensure that people actually practice PA more.

Practical implications:
During our presentation, we can elaborate which steps we have taken to integrate policies aimed at more physical activity. Which are working, and what we still need to learn from others? We also learn from the Policy Dialogues, organised by the WHO.

Funding: Funding comes from the government, municipalities and local organisations.