ParticipACTION: the future challenges for physical activity promotion in Canada
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BioMed Central
Open Access
Commentary
ParticipACTION: the future challenges for physical activity promotion in Canada Adrian Bauman*1, Nick Cavill2 and Lawrence Brawley3 Address: 1Centre for Physical Activity and Health, School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 2Cavill Associates, Stockport, Cheshire, UK and 3College of Kinesiology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada Email: Adrian Bauman* - [email protected]; Nick Cavill - [email protected]; Lawrence Brawley - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 9 December 2009 International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2009, 6:89
doi:10.1186/1479-5868-6-89
Received: 23 April 2009 Accepted: 9 December 2009
This article is available from: http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/6/1/89 © 2009 Bauman et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract This commentary is the concluding piece of a series of papers about the Canadian ParticipACTION initiative. It describes the resurgence of the new ParticipACTION as a national communications initiative in Canada, and sets this in an international context. The set of ParticipACTION papers in this issue establish benchmarks and provide baseline and initial impact data for the evaluation and monitoring of ParticipACTION, using qualitative and quantiative research methods. As a set, they describe a comprehensive approach to setting up evaluations of national social marketing efforts to promote physical activity.
Commentary The resurgence of the 'new ParticipACTION' in September 2007 was an important moment for physical activity promotion in Canada. The original ParticipACTION had lasted thirty years, and had become symbolic of quintessential Canadian values and beliefs about the benefits of participating in physical activity in the great outdoors. Political pressures and government cutbacks led to the withdrawal of funding in 2001, but six years later, it was re-born, with a short term mandate to develop communications strategies to promote physical activity, and develop partnerships and collaborations among key stakeholders involved in this area. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and review the research presented in this series of papers in the light of ParticipACTION's current challenges. Further, we set this initiative in an international comparative context, indicating the unique opportunities it provides and the challenges that it faces in the future.
Health-related mass media campaigns to promote physical activity at the whole population level have been reported since the 1980s [1]. These have mostly been short-term persuasive campaigns, based on a communications-behavior change framework, and focused on influencing individual awareness, perceptions and physical activity beha
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