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Table 1 Introductory preamble

From: Evidence-informed recommendations for constructing and disseminating messages supplementing the new Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines

 

General preamble

Content

The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology released the new Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines for children, youth, adults and older adults in January 2011. These guidelines reflect the most up-to-date evidence for the frequency, intensity, duration and type of physical activity necessary to achieve health benefits.

We recognize that guidelines should be supplemented with a comprehensive intervention strategy to help Canadians reach these guidelines. This comprehensive strategy should focus on changing Canadians’ behaviour, the environments in which Canadians live, work, and play, and the policies that support physical activity. The Messaging Recommendations included here have a very specific objective of providing public health practitioners with general principles for constructing messages that a) clarify what is new about the guidelines and b) motivate Canadians to meet the guidelines. The recommendations were developed by a panel of experts including researchers with expertise in promoting physical activity and practitioners with expertise in social marketing and public health. All recommendations are based on current research evidence.

These recommendations should be used as a starting point for creating messages included in campaigns and information included in resources promoting physical activity. The recommendations will help practitioners identify whom messages should be targeted towards, general content for the messages, and methods for disseminating the guidelines. Because these guidelines are meant to be a series of general principles applicable to a variety of practices and contexts, specific examples and statistics have not been provided. Rather, practitioners will be required to seek information specific their audience. Recommended sources for this information include:

Recommended Resources

Physical Activity Guidelines

See the guidelines section on the CSEP website: http://www.csep.ca

Physical activity participation rates and barriers to participation

Visit the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute: http://www.cflri.ca

Benefits of physical activity

Refer to the systematic reviews of research evidence informing the development of the new Physical Activity Guidelines http://www.ijbnpa.org/series/canada_physical_activity

Definitions of key terms

See the glossary of terms on the CSEP website: http://www.csep.ca

Specific examples of strategies to meet the physical activity guidelines

Visit the ParticipACTION website: http://www.participaction.com