Dipartimento di Prevenzione
Regione Veneto
ULSS 20 Verona

Physical activity promotion

Physical activity and health promotion (ppt 2,17Mb)

Lifestyle factors related to physical activity (p.a.) play a major role in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer and other pathologic conditions.
Besides individual determinants of lifestyle, like motivation factors, the context within which health behaviour takes place has to be taken into account: evidence indicating the importance of social and environmental factors has been reported by many researchers, and a urging need is growing to implement new strategies of intervention in order to influence these factors which can represent an important obstacle to desired lifestyle changes.
The main effective interventions to promote p.a., on the basis of published scientific studies, are the following: community-wide campaigns directing messages to large audiences by means of TV, newspapers, mailings and other media; individually adapted health behavior change programs; social support interventions in community context - creating or stengthening social networks; improving access to places for physical activity (such as creating trails and facilities for physical activity, reducing fees, potentiating public transport) combined with informational outreach; point-of-decision prompts (for example, by locating signs close to elevators and escalators).

Therefore, since 1999 the Verona Prevention Department developed (in collaboration with the local University Motor Science Department) a community-based program that aims to increase p.a. levels and to improve health status by means of an integrated socio-environmental intervention accordingly with international public health guidelines on physical activity promotion.
Such intervention was developed in Verona - Italy, mainly in the urban districts.
Moreover, since 2002 p.a. promotion was included among the goals of the Public Health Services in Veneto (a broad region in northern Italy with 4.5 millions inhabitants which includes big ancient towns, like Verona and Venice, and rural communities). Consequently, the Public Health Regional Policy Plan for 2002/04 and 2005/07 includes a project on "Motor activity, sport and disease prevention" whose reference centre is the Prevention Department - ULSS 20 Verona, Director dott. Massimo Valsecchi. The main goals of the project are: prevention of cronic diseases (mainly CVD and diabetes) by means of p.a. promotion; p.a. levels monitoring; increasing the number of youngsters, seniors (10%) and diabetic persons (15%) regularly involved in motor activity; developing p.a. programs for at least 10% of nursing homes residents; building an operating network with public health practitioners, diabetologists, patient associations, municipalities, policy-makers and physical trainers to promote p.a..
To day the main activities of the regional network have been the following: tracing local resources (p.a. classes for seniors living in the community or indwelling residents; involvment of patient associations, general practitioners and diabetes outpatients clinics; etc); training health care workers and physical activity trainers, in collaboration with the local University Motor Science Department; funding local projects (involving p.a. promotion in seniors and diabetic persons, walking promotion, walking leaders training, creation of new walking trails); promoting p.a.; creating informative materials, like posters and powerpoint presentations.
The community-based p.a. promotion program is based on the following activities:

1. Advocacy: synthetizing and spreading existing knowledge on p.a. and health, and collaborating with local policy-makers, institutions and stakeholders on physical activity-related themes;
   
   
2. Motor activity classes and walking groups, mainly for seniors and diabetics;
   
   
3. Urban health: collaborating with Verona and surrounding municipalities to reduce pollution, increase free access green areas and cycling trails, reorganize traffic and transport, promote walking and cycling in urban areas;
   
   
4. Kids-walk-to-school and physical activity promotion for children: the department, in collaboration with Verona municipality, is engaged in walking promotion for children attending primary school. Meanwhile, we are stimulating local municipalities to reduce environmental risk in surrounding roads (such as reducing traffic and other barriers to walking); the regional Public Health Services network adheres to international kids-walk-to-school month with local events held in each of the 21 health departments of Veneto. Moreover, the department promotes the event "Piccoli cittadini per grandi strade" ("Mini citizens in maxi roads") for public and private institutions; a prize will be given to the best local project in the field of physical activity promotion in everyday life of children.
   
   
5. General practitioners and physical activity promotion: to overcome misconcepts against the importance and the efficacy of p.a. counselling within general practice, group sessions will be held for general practitioners in each of the 21 health departments of Veneto.
   
   
6. Other related activities carried out by the Department in the field of healthy lifestyles promotion are: healthy nutrition promotion; cardiovascular and diabetes prevention regional project; Last Minute Market (distribution of vegetables unsold by local foodshops and restaurants to lower income urban residents).
   

For information you can contact:
web site http://prevenzione.ulss20.verona.it/att_motoria.html
e-mail: smorgante@ulss20.verona.it
phone: 0039 45 807 5969
fax: 0039 45 807 5003

Veneto Region adheres to the international I walk to schhool program
Promoting walking and cycling as an alternative to using cars: systematic review (pdf 260Kb);
The challenges of evaluating environmental interventions to increase population levels of physical activity: the case of the UK National Cycle Network (pdf 235Kb).
OMS - promoting PA in urban environments (pdf 1Mb)
Walk leader training manual -Intro (pdf 2,57Kb) -1 (pdf 506 Kb) -1.1 (pdf 338Kb) -1.2 (pdf 212 Kb) -1.3 (pdf 2,08Mb) -1.4 (pdf 372 Kb) -1.5 (pdf 1,65 Mb)
OMS - Diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases (pdf, 722Kb)