Physical inactivity imposes substantial social costs in the form of increased hospital stays and the increased use of physician and nurse services.
Some of these statistics will knock your socks off.
Compared to an active person, an inactive person will spend 38% more days in hospital, use 5.5% more family physician visits, use 13% more specialist services, and use 12% more nurse visits. On an annual basis, the additional use of health care associated with physical inactivity results in approximately 2.37 million family physician visits, 1.33 million other physician visits, 470,000 nurse visits, and 1.42 million hospital stays.
Twenty-five chronic diseases are directly linked to physical inactivity. We know that physical inactivity can increase the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, breast cancer, colon cancer, type 2 diabetes, and osteoporosis.
According to a 2010 report from the Conference Board of Canada, we could save $76 billion over the next 10 years by tackling the five main risk factors for heart disease: smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, high blood pressure, and a lack of fruit and vegetable consumption. Physical inactivity is tied to three of those five.
As has been widely reported, health care costs are consuming a greater proportion of provincial budgets, and we know that here in Ontario if we continue on the same trajectory, within the next 11 to 12 years health care will consume more than 70% of the provincial budget. It's clear that solving the inactivity crisis is a social and economic imperative.
As for solving the inactivity crisis, as a society we are currently failing our children and our youth. The tragedy--and I will use that word, but also the opportunity--is that we're crippling ourselves with diseases and negative outcomes that are truly preventable. But we do have the power to change. As I mentioned, I left the private sector to come to the not-for-profit sector because I would like to go out and change the world. It is possible. We can go out and change the world if we focus on this.
In 2011 the Toronto Charter For Physical Activity was developed, with extensive worldwide consultation, and in that Toronto charter, the Global Advocacy for Physical Activity Council stated its ten different best investments for physical activity. Three of them are those ParticipACTION focuses on.
Number one, through our communications and social marketing campaigns, ParticipACTION uses mass media to raise awareness and change social norms on physical activity. Studies indicate that mass media communication campaigns can influence awareness of the physical inactivity issue and bring about long-term behaviour change.
Our social marketing campaigns do measure everything before and after. We know that our most recent campaign influenced the behaviour of more than 50% of the population in regard to taking action as a result of seeing those ads.
Through its capacity-building initiatives and partnerships with other physical activity, sports, and recreation organizations, ParticipACTION supports community-wide programs that mobilize and integrate community engagement and resources.
Finally, ParticipACTION brings value to the sport and physical activity sectors by assisting organizations to further their mandates through the development and coordination of initiatives. I'll give you just three examples here.
One initiative is Sports Day in Canada. Last year we held our very first Sports Day in Canada. It was a national event. The whole idea is designed to celebrate amateur sport in this country and to increase sport participation. In 2010 we had 35 different sports profiled, a thousand organizations participated, and we were in every province and territory. There were 1.3 million Canadians who participated and we had over 60 million media impressions.
Survey results confirm that the initiative resulted in increased registration and participation in sport programs, 26.5%; increased awareness of sport organizations and programs, 46%; and increased local media attention for events, 23%.
A second initiative is Sogo Active. Sogo Active is for youth, by youth, and is designed to get our youth more physically active, as only 7% of our kids meet the daily physical activity guidelines, and in terms of teenagers meeting those guidelines, even fewer than that. Sogo Active was able to increase teens' physical activity levels by 30 minutes per day on average.