There are policies and plans. We must act. This is where we need more communities to take a multisectoral community approach. As the old saying goes, it takes a village.
What does a village need to do to activate the global and national strategies? We need to implement strategies that take this multisectoral community approach.
While promoting being active is important, investing in promotion only will not achieve our desired outcomes.
While schools are really important, strategies cannot depend solely on schools. That has been done in the past, and the result is that physical education specialists are being cut out of the education system, which leads to an erosion of quality opportunities to develop movement skills and have quality physical activity during school hours.
While parents are super important, they cannot carry the burden alone as they try to juggle work and family life amidst a bubble-wrap culture and are now needing to figure out how to ensure their child gets the adequate movement time in the limited hours they have together.
While municipal recreation and community organizations are important, currently quality programming and accessibility vary greatly.
Although sport has many participants, the local clubs vary greatly in the quality of the programming, the training and competition, that they deliver.
The health sector is increasingly recognizing the benefits; however, it is not well-connected to physical activity in the community to highlight its value.
All of these groups need to collaborate. They're doing great work, but generally in silos. There are great organizations in the room today, but we need to do it in a collaborative manner that brings together physical activity promoters, parents, schools, and the recreation and sport and health sectors to effect the system change we need.
A Canadian strategy needs multisectoral community tables to collaboratively develop physical literacy. The result will be increased physical activity and fitness.