- IMPAQT stands for ‘IMproving Physical Activity policies and their impact on health eQuiTy’ and it is set to generate ground breaking knowledge and action in physical activity and public health.
- IMPAQT is an innovative project focusing on enhancing #HealthEquity in physical activity policy development and monitoring.
- IMPAQT is based on scientific research as well as the involvement of #policymakers, #experts and #citizens through a co-production approach in six European countries Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Ireland.
- The 1.68 million project is led by Professor Catherine Woods, Director of the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre, a Health Research Institute priority area in the University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
- IMPAQT received funding from the Health Research Board (Ireland) under the umbrella of the Partnership Fostering a European Research Area for Health (ERA4Health) (GA N° 101095426 of the EU Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme.
The growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) creates a need for effective public policy to change systems instead of individuals and create supportive contexts that reduce NCDs and health inequity. Project lead, Prof. Woods said
A major determinant of disease reduction is physical activity (PA). Covid-19 emphasized PA’s protective effects and movement restrictions highlighted the inequities experienced by population subgroups with low PA levels (e.g. children, women, minorities, and people with disabilities).
IMPAQT will improve health equity ‘in’ and ‘through’ PA for large parts of the population by developing, testing and promoting policy benchmarking as a tool to make PA policy more effective and equitable. By utilizing cutting-edge methodologies, including the newly developed Physical Activity-Environment Policy Index (PA-EPI) and engaging diverse stakeholders including policymakers, non-governmental experts and citizens, IMPAQT seeks to create country-specific policy implementation scores and actionable recommendations to bridge implementation gaps.
Despite good progress at a country level regarding the introduction of national policies for physical activity, minimal progress has been made on addressing population levels of physical inactivity. This is in part due to a lack of ‘upstream’ policy progress in domains known to be effective for physical activity promotion such as health, schools, transport, urban design, sport, communities, workplaces and communication. It is also in part due to a lack of effective infrastructure support for policy implementation such as leadership and governance, monitoring and surveillance, workforce development. Effective policy intervention is essential if we are to meet World Health Organisation target of a 15% relative reduction in the prevalence of population inactivity by 2030.
The IMPAQT project, using the PA-EPI tool, will help policymakers determine:
1) Where their country is now in relation to the implementation of Physical Activity policies, known to be effective in addressing population inactivity.
2) What is possible to change, IMPAQT will provide pathways on how to reach goals to address critical implementation gaps and a mechanism for countries to document progress.
The project will yield country-specific policy index scores, which will be translated into report cards containing critical implementation gaps and policy recommendations. Transnational comparisons will provide international benchmarks for healthy and equitable PA policy environments.
