Sit less and walk more- a route for healthier aging and increased wellbeing

1. Tweet: #sitless Sit less and walk more-a route for healthier aging and increased wellbeing Professor Nanette Mutrie Chair of Physical Activity for Health Director of Physical Activity for Health Research Centre PAHRC www.ed.ac.uk/education/pahrc Dr Liz Such Lecturer in Leisure and Sport Policy

2. Overview • Background • Tasks involved • Quantitative results • Qualitative results • Conclusions

3. Background • Emerging evidence that too much sitting down time is: • Bad for health • Independent of how much physical activity the person does • Important for ageing population and wellbeing • Many current jobs are sedentary

4. Key relevant policy areas • National Policy Framework. Two National Indicators for health: • Increase physical activity • Improve mental wellbeing • Vision 2020: • “by 2020 everyone is able to live longer healthier lives at home, or in a homely setting” • Social Care Bill: • ensuring dignity and security in old age • Let’s Make Scotland More Active • and the 2009 review of this policy

5. Aims of our Fellowship • Engage with the parliament workforce on • ‘sitting less and walking more’ • First • by raising awareness of the issue of ‘sitting down time’ • Second • by personal engagement with volunteers who wanted to ‘sit less and walk more’ during the working day • this took the form of a 4 week ‘project’

6. Tasks involved • Meetings and briefing to raise awareness • ~50 people in total • Blog providing regular info and discussion: • over 600 views/260 visitors during project • Personal engagement for those interested • review of physical activity and sitting time • Use of pedometer to monitor activity during work day • Invitation event–TODAY! • Report to Beltane

7. Meetings and greetings • 6 briefing meetings in groups of 3-20 • [n= 50] • 35 individuals were interested in personal change • 20 people have completed the 4 week ‘project’ to date • 13 people have completed a more in depth interview

8. What we asked people to do • Wear a pedometer for a ‘baseline’ week • Decide on whether or not behaviour change needed • Try new ways of working that involved ‘sitting less and walking more’ for 3 weeks • Return results sheets to Nanette • Complete an interview with Liz

9. Some quantitative results An increase of ~300 steps /day Paired t-test =2.9 (17), p<0.01

10. Additional information • Step count recorded during working day • Lowest 620 • Highest 8,320 • Ironically • the days when parliament ‘sitting’ created most activity!

11. Top tips • Use stairs rather than lift • Leave desk at regular intervals • Get outside for a breath of fresh air • Speak directly to colleagues • Do not eat lunch at desk • Use distant water coolers, printers, photocopiers and toilets

12. Issues • For women • Wearing the pedometer • Solved by new generation pedometers • Differing number of working hours/day • Working at home days observed to be very sedentary

13. Initial qualitative findings: themes • Explored participants’ experiences and thoughts on the project • Examined participants’ attitudes towards sedentariness and physical activity at work • Looked at enablers and constrainers - physical and cultural

14. 1. Experience of the project • Overall enthusiasm • Pedometers useful – objective measure • Raised awareness about activity and inactivity • Encouraged behaviour change, certainly in the short-term • Encouraged reflection on the structure and culture of work and how that interacted with personal choice and action in relation to physical (in)activity

15. 2. Attitudes • General frustration with ‘desk-bound’ existence • Difficult to build-in activity • Dependent on role – some more active than others • Blame technology • Broad recognition of need to be more physically active generally and specifically

16. 3. Enablers and constrainers • The physical environment: • Parliament building • Holyrood area • The cultural environment: • Desk presenteeism • Interruption • ‘Closing’ open spaces – related to ‘siloism’, confidence • Meetings – sitting, long

17. Paul Grice, CEO Scottish Parliament "I think there is a culture of sitting, and I haven’t really given it deep thought as to why that would be. An obvious one, there’s chairs everywhere! And we’re sitting now. It’s a comfortable, relaxing, informal way of doing things, if we were to stand up right now, we would both I think feel a little more formal about it. … But I think it is an area that could and should be addressed, and I think the way to do that would be perhaps to pilot it more formally [standing meetings] and invite a couple of teams just to try it and then let us know how did it feel … Depending on what comes out of your study, I’d be willing to have a further look at that … maybe get a couple of teams that have been part of this, just to say well would you like to experiment a bit with that and come back with your thoughts”

18. http://sitless.wordpress.com/ • Blog – please add comments and questions • Tweet using #sitless

19. Conclusions • For most people the working day is more sedentary than active • Modest changes to working practice can alter that • The parliamentary volunteers have suggested some ‘top tips’ that could help any workforce • ‘sit less and walk more’