by ACSM May 26, 2010
Antronette Yancey, MD-Creator of Instant Recess™, Meb Keflezighi-American marathon champion, Robert Sallis, MD, FACSM-Chair of Exercise is Medicine™
This is my last post as president of the American College of Sports Medicine (Tom Best, M.D., Ph.D., takes office at the conclusion of our 57th Annual Meeting, June 2-5 in Baltimore). One special satisfaction of this remarkable year has been the opportunity for the College to play a role in the development and launch of the National Physical Activity Plan.
ACSM has contributed in several ways, all in keeping with our mission. Many of our member/experts served on the working groups that identified strategies and tactics for each of the Plan's eight sectors. Robert Sallis, M.D., led the Health Care working group. What could be more appropriate for the chair of the Exercise is MedicineTM initiative than helping all Americans enjoy optimum health by ensuring they have opportunities for physical activity?
As the Plan now moves into implementation, I urge all ACSM members to become involved. As experts in an array of disciplines from education and research to clinical medicine and health/fitness, ACSM members have the skills and connections to carry the Plan's strategies to policy makers and others who can make them a reality.
We each have a personal stake in bringing about the kinds of changes called for in the Plan. Our children need to be more active at school. Our neighborhoods need sidewalks and pocket parks. Our roads need bike lanes. Our employers need to encourage workplace wellness, and so on.
The National Physical Activity Plan, like ACSM, is comprehensive, diverse and rich with opportunities. Helping implement the Plan embodies our role of translating knowledge into practice. Nothing could be more appropriate—and nothing could have a more profound impact on so many individuals and communities.
What opportunities does your professional role offer to help implement the National Physical Activity Plan?
What can you do as a member of your community to help bring opportunities for appropriate physical activity to each of your fellow citizens?
by ODPHP May 24, 2010
This week, we highlight ways different American communities are bring us closer to meeting the National Physical Activity Plan’s goal that one day, all Americans will be physically active and they will live, work, and play in environments that facilitate regular physical activity. In the news:
America's 50 Largest Metro Areas Get Their Annual Physical (Fox News) For the third straight year, the Washington, D.C., metro area claimed the highest ranking in the American College of Sports Medicine's (ACSM) American Fitness Index(TM) (AFI). The AFI data report, "Health and Community Fitness Status of the 50 Largest Metropolitan Areas," evaluates the most populous city areas to determine the healthiest and fittest metro areas in the United States.
In Honor of Senior Health & Fitness Day, SCAN Health Plan Arizona Reaffirms Its Commitment to Healthy and Independent Aging (PR Newswire) The SCAN Connections Resource Center offers a variety of ongoing classes designed for seniors, including Chair Tai Chi, Laughter Yoga, Qigong, and Stretching for Strength and Balance. These courses are available to all seniors in the Phoenix area not just SCAN’s medicare advantage members.
ACT kids have a field day at Watson Pond (Taunton Gazette) Active Children Together (ACT) aims to enrich the lives of children with special needs by providing them the opportunity to participate in sports, an opportunity some of them may not have in other settings.
Does your community rank highly on the American Fitness Index? What are you doing to improve physical fitness among your community?
by NCPPA May 19, 2010
One of my favorite quotes from the movie Sea Biscuit is, “This is not the finish line, my friends. This is the start of the race.” I consider May 3, 2010 – the day that the Nation’s first Physical Activity Plan was launched – as the start of the race to increase the number of American’s striving to achieve the amount of physical activity recommended for their demographic in the National Physical Activity Guidelines. It is a race that my organization, the National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity (NCPPA) believes is critical to improving the health of our Nation and reducing the cost of healthcare.
NCPPA is off and running ourselves, providing the leadership for implementation of the Plan. We have been working for several months to build a network of organizations dedicated to ensuring that the strategies and tactics included in each of the eight sectors in the Plan becomes a reality.
Never before has the urgency of physical inactivity and its complications been so widely reported. The rise in awareness – along with a better understanding of what interventions work and how to apply them has provided the momentum for The Plan and is what is fueling organizations throughout the country to ask “How can we help?”
The National Implementation Team is a tiered collaborative effort with organizations serving as sector leaders, strategy leaders and strategy supporters. NCPPA has built a team of 15 organizations that have agreed to serve as leaders across the sectors. These leaders will coordinate the efforts of the strategy leaders in their sector and the strategy leaders will in turn coordinate the strategy supporters. In many cases, these organizations are going to continue efforts on initiatives that they have previously been working on; however there is now more opportunity for collaboration and visibility. In other cases, they may choose to work on a brand new initiative but one that is very much in alignment with their established goals and visions.
The National Physical Activity Plan will have unprecedented reach and this is just one of the reasons, that the Plan is a unique effort. In the aggregate, the reach among the fifteen organizations serving as Sector Leaders represent:
- 315 public health officials at every level of government
- 48 state boards of education providing oversight to almost 46 million children
- 1,000,000 certified professionals working in health, education, transportation, fitness, business, and the nonprofit world
- Over 2.8 billion media impressions
- More than 390,000,000 consumers
The ability to reach such a diverse and distributed network with a prescription for change and simple strategies to achieve it is one of the most powerful components of the National Plan.
If your organization is interested in becoming involved with the NPAP, please let us know by visiting the NCPPA website and clicking on the Get Involved! button.
What sector, strategy and/or tactics do you see your organization becoming involved with? What do you think is the “low hanging fruit” in your sector(s) of interest?
