RCPI: Promoting Physical Activity

What do we want?

The Department of Health and Children recommends that all children and young people should be active, at a moderate to vigorous level, for at least 60 minutes every day. This should include muscle-strengthening, flexibility and bone-strengthening exercises three times a week. The guidelines for adults recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate activity on five days a week (or 150 minutes a week).

We want to see more people meeting those guidelines, and we want physicians and other health professionals to play an active role in increasing national physical activity levels. To achieve this, we will:

• highlight the positive health impact of physical activity to the public and to policy makers
• advocate for national policy measure that will increase physical activity levels
• promote physical activity within clinical practice
• recommend improvements to medical training and education to ensure patients receive appropriate advice and support on physical activity

A prescription for a wonder drug- recommendations

Doctors and other healthcare professionals 

• Use brief interventions to offer advice and support patients who are sedentary or inactive but otherwise healthy. 
• Ask patients about their level of physical activity; inform them of the benefits and encourage them set goals in relation to physical activity and to track their own progress.  
• Offer advice or a prescription for physical activity with reference to frequency, duration, intensity and type.  
• Where appropriate, use professionally supervised structured exercise programmes (exercise referral schemes) for management and rehabilitation for certain health conditions.  
• Be physically active themselves 

• Encourage women to be physically active when pregnant. 
• Inform patients of the benefits of physical activity 
• Encourage them to build physical activity into their daily routine 

The public: 

• Make small changes to bring more physical activity into your day, for example through taking the stairs instead of the lift. Being active includes formal exercise, team or individual sports as well as walking or cycling to work and even some household chores. 
• Aim to be more active. Even small increases in regular physical activity bring positive health benefits; greater increases up to and above the recommended 30 minutes daily, bring greater health benefits. 
• Reduce and break up the time spent sitting every day, especially time watching TV. If you do sit for long periods every day be as active as you can be outside of this time to reduce the negative health impacts of sitting time. If you sit for more than 8 hours daily, try to be active for at least an hour every day.  
• Take the stairs instead of the lift.  

 Policy makers: 

• Prioritise the creation of a safe and attractive environment for physical activity, including walking and cycling infrastructure. 
• Ensure that schools encourage physical activity throughout the day, and that sufficient time is given to PE. 
• Introduce financial incentives to encourage people to be physically active, eg tax incentives on club and gym memberships and VAT reduction on sports equipment 
• Commit sufficient resources and annual reviews of the National Activity Plan

Read more about these recommendations and the scientific evidence behind them in the reports below.