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Coordinator: Prof. Marlos Rodrigues Domingues Academic Profile
The practice of physical activity provides short and long term benefits for the health of the population. It is estimated that the worldwide prevalence of physical inactivity in 15-year-old or older individuals is 31.1%. When it comes to Brazil, a sample of the adult population of the Brazilian capitals showed that only 14.9% of the individuals were active in leisure time, and the majority were men.
On the other hand, 29.2% of the individuals did not engage in any physical activity during leisure, did not make intense physical efforts at work, did not go to work on foot or bicycle, and were not responsible for the heavy cleaning of their homes, being classified as sedentary. This scenario posits the promotion of physical activity as a major challenge for the public health field. In this context, the monitoring of physical activity and its sociodemographic determinants are important.
Although scientific knowledge about physical activity has grown exponentially in recent years and a series of interventions with proven effectiveness are available, this growth is not accompanied by effective action. In order to fill this gap, in 2012 a Global Observatory for Physical Activity (http://www.globalphysicalactivityobservatory.com/) was created.
The Observatory is an affiliate of the International Society for Physical Activity and Health (http://www.ispah.org) and has as its central goal to transform the abundant existing information on physical activity and health into action, in addition to monitoring the progress of the pandemic of physical inactivity periodically.
Among the main activities of the Observatory are identifying contacts in each country and articulating with existing regional physical activity networks to establish collaboration in promoting physical activity in the world. In addition, the Observatory led the preparation of the second series of physical activity published in the Lancet in 2016. Researchers, managers, national and international physical activity societies are being invited to be part of the Observatory.
Among these, the Graduate Programs in Physical Education and Epidemiology are leaders of this initiative, placing Universidade Federal de Pelotas at the forefront of the study and description of the existence and magnitude of sociodemographic inequalities in practice of activity through the monitoring of this behavior in level populations that historically receive less attention.