Public Health – STRATEGY 5

Expand monitoring of policy and environmental determinants of physical activity and the levels of physical activity in communities (surveillance), and monitor the implementation of public health approaches to promoting active lifestyles (evaluation).

TACTICS

• Increase networking and collaboration between practitioners, researchers, community-based organizations, and advocates.
• Identify and promote a common set of measures that CDC can apply across diverse populations to track progress at state and national levels.
• Encourage CDC and the Physical Activity Policy Research Network (PAPRN) to define a common framework to evaluate policy and environmental change processes, outcomes, and impacts.
• Promote efforts by CDC and professional societies to build the capacity of practitioners to monitor key outcome measures of chosen interventions.
• Increase funding of CDC, Prevention Research Centers, PAPRN, and the National Institutes of Health to conduct research on policy development and its impact on physical activity.
• Regularly assess and report (e.g., national report card) on progress toward increasing physical activity and reducing physical inactivity.
• Improve and expand surveillance of physical activity and inactivity, including sedentary time, light activity, and fitness.
• Expand surveillance systems to monitor the status of environmental and policy determinants of physical activity and the disparities in resource availability and utilization.
• Expand surveillance systems to include the systematic assessment of physical activity and fitness levels of children and youth, including those from underserved communities.
• For relevant surveillance systems, include state-level reporting when feasible.
• Improve linkages between local policy and environmental change and national and state data collection systems.
• Create and expand relevant local surveillance or other physical activity data collection systems.
• Expand the ability of public health agencies and systems to provide health data that allows communities to understand the burden of inactivity in their communities, and to tailor approaches to increase physical activity to local circumstances.

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