Project overview
Many people find it difficult, or even impossible, to meet the levels of physical activity recommended by health organisations, despite its wide-ranging physical and mental health benefits. Researchers and health professionals have created various support programmes to help people to be more active. These are often delivered or initiated by GPs, nurses and other primary health care professionals, but we know relatively little about what people think and feel about these initial conversations around increasing physical activity.
Trials show that physical activity support programmes can work well, but engagement from certain groups remains low, often due to a lack of opportunity, ability or willingness to be involved. This includes people from ethnic minority communities (particularly women), people living in areas of high deprivation, and those living with long term health conditions. We know a bit about the reasons for this, but understanding more about these groups’ experiences of attempts by healthcare professionals to initiate physical activity support is vital. By learning what matters to people and what’s going on in their lives, we can work with them to find better ways to start conversations about being active that feel relevant and respectful.
This work will invite adults from ethnic minority communities and people from areas of high deprivation, to take part in informal and friendly group discussions. We will work with two community organisations already working with these groups to plan and run sessions in familiar settings. Attendees will be paid for their time, offered refreshments, and invited to take part in optional creative activities. The focus of these sessions is not about advising people to be more active, but about listening and learning from people’s lived experiences to understand how support could be initiated and delivered in ways that better suit their lives and contexts.
We will take notes during these sessions and will collect these together to explore experiences across different groups. We will write up what we do, and what we learn in a way that clearly communicates with the groups what messages we have taken away, and will give the groups opportunities to check, add to, and change this. We will also write this up to share with other researchers and health professionals in research papers, and via meetings where we can share what we learn.
What we learn will guide the next steps. We’ll identify how these insights could be put into practice, what further work is needed to do this, and which questions remain unanswered. We’ll also use what we learn to design a future study to address these priorities. Anyone from the participating groups who is interested will be invited and supported to stay involved in shaping the next steps of this work.
PPI co-applicants
- Rebecca Hammerton
- Len Cato
In collaboration with Montys Community Hub and St Deny's Activity Group.
Trials show that physical activity support programmes can work well, but engagement from certain groups remains low, often due to a lack of opportunity, ability or willingness to be involved. This includes people from ethnic minority communities (particularly women), people living in areas of high deprivation, and those living with long term health conditions. We know a bit about the reasons for this, but understanding more about these groups’ experiences of attempts by healthcare professionals to initiate physical activity support is vital. By learning what matters to people and what’s going on in their lives, we can work with them to find better ways to start conversations about being active that feel relevant and respectful.
This work will invite adults from ethnic minority communities and people from areas of high deprivation, to take part in informal and friendly group discussions. We will work with two community organisations already working with these groups to plan and run sessions in familiar settings. Attendees will be paid for their time, offered refreshments, and invited to take part in optional creative activities. The focus of these sessions is not about advising people to be more active, but about listening and learning from people’s lived experiences to understand how support could be initiated and delivered in ways that better suit their lives and contexts.
We will take notes during these sessions and will collect these together to explore experiences across different groups. We will write up what we do, and what we learn in a way that clearly communicates with the groups what messages we have taken away, and will give the groups opportunities to check, add to, and change this. We will also write this up to share with other researchers and health professionals in research papers, and via meetings where we can share what we learn.
What we learn will guide the next steps. We’ll identify how these insights could be put into practice, what further work is needed to do this, and which questions remain unanswered. We’ll also use what we learn to design a future study to address these priorities. Anyone from the participating groups who is interested will be invited and supported to stay involved in shaping the next steps of this work.
PPI co-applicants
- Rebecca Hammerton
- Len Cato
In collaboration with Montys Community Hub and St Deny's Activity Group.
