Wellness Policy Actions to Help More of Us Move and Get Healthy
By Tonia Callender, GWI research fellow
On June 21, many thousands around the world celebrated International Yoga Day. This year’s theme, “Yoga for One Earth, One Health”, highlighted our collective need to improve our physical and mental health. The benefits of physical activities like yoga are well documented, and government public awareness campaigns encourage us to be more active.
International Yoga Day showcased people practicing yoga together in easily accessible places. Yet many of us lack convenient access to exercise spaces. The global fitness and exercise industry continues to grow, but it only meets the needs of a small share of the world’s population. Too many of us are moving less often, and in many countries, obesity rates are rising.
To move our communities towards better physical and mental health, public and private stakeholders must work together. Investing in recreational physical activity infrastructure, facilities, and programs will help more people stay active. Public investments in parks, playgrounds, trails, sporting/exercise facilities, mass recreation events, free classes, and other recreational activities can play a major role in making leisure-time physical activities convenient, more accessible, and cheaper. To improve access to physical activities national and local governments should:
Treat recreational physical activity as an essential public service. To encourage widespread participation in recreation and exercise, governments can partner with the nonprofit and private sectors to deliver high-quality, low-cost facilities.
- Establish a “sports for all” policy framework or physical activity action plan. Government stakeholders can encourage public/private/community collaborations and shift resources toward investments, facilities, and programs with the greatest impact.
- Create more free and accessible public spaces for outdoor recreation and exercise. Physical activity infrastructure should be accessible and safe, with open venues and green spaces. People can exercise safely together in parks, public squares, parking lots, streets, stadiums, and on beaches.
- Sponsor free exercise classes, programs, and educational campaigns. Public investments in infrastructure are more effective at increasing physical activity when they are combined with programming, community engagement, and access enhancements.
- Invest in subsidized and public-private fitness facilities. Governments can partner with the private fitness industry to develop and run free or subsided public fitness and recreation facilities.
To learn more about policies that can improve access to physical activity, see GWI’s Wellness Policy Toolkit: Physical Activity.
