Moving Together Outside - American Council on Exercise® [Podcast Series]

• [:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Graham Melstrand

  • Graham is Executive Vice President, Mission and Stakeholder Engagement, at the American Council on Exercise®.

  • He is also President Elect of the Physical Activity Alliance.  

• [1:18] Mission alignment

  • “We believe that the community-based physical activity programs and interventions are critical components to ensuring access, diversity of programming options to support all of the different things that consumers are interested in, and providing the leadership and the expertise that meet the needs of all members of the communities.”

• [3:20] COVID pandemic and the Moving Together Outside campaign

  • “So many communities provided some flexibility in exchange for those closures that were imposed on them, by allowing those facilities, those exercise professionals, to take their programs and services to a risk mitigated environment in parks or other community spaces, so that they could continue to provide services that consumers still want and felt that they needed.”

• [7:02] The value for exercise professionals

  • “And this is an opportunity for us to bring our expertise, our leadership to those communities and take on kind of that higher profile as a resource for people, particularly during COVID, where there has been such a dramatically different outcome for people with good health status versus poor health status or underlying conditions.”

• [10:46] Pathway to sustainability

  • “As we move from pandemic to endemic, they're uncomfortable with the idea of going back indoors, or quite frankly, if they just enjoy the outdoor environment.  There's a growing body of evidence around the idea of green exercise and green physical activity where you're outside in nature. And in many cases people make the connection to that exercise being more palatable and better tolerated is that you have the community support, you have the professionals that are kind of coloring within the lines, if you will, by seeking out those permits and holding a current credible credential from an organization like ACE.”

• [15:18] Resources for policymakers and exercise professionals

  • “So really, I think that the real value in the directory that we're building is that it gives insight into what other communities are doing, which reduces the risk for the policymakers, because otherwise their natural inclination is to make it expensive.”

• [18:39] High visibility for exercise professionals

  • “So having programs that resonate with people, the types of activities that they're interested in engaging in, and having those scheduled and delivered by a qualified professional, it's amazing how well received that is.”

• [20:34] Success stories

  • “And then the one that really surfaced related to the Moving Together Outside campaign and the pandemic—and you were involved with the discussion with her—is St. Petersburg, where they built a comprehensive community wellness initiative, Healthy St. Pete, that includes not only a permitting program that engages professionals and facilities to deliver programs and services in parks, but also to basically sponsor and deliver at least once per month for free in parks in exchange for the community recognition so that everybody has access.”

• [25:44] Meeting people’s needs

  • “Sure, well, and to your point when you're describing what you see right outside your window, it helps people move from that pre contemplative phase, too, where they're like, ‘Well, I'm not sure what's happening in there or if I’ll like it or if it's for me or if I’ll like the other people that I'm participating with. One of the challenges, I think, with membership and fitness facilities is an individual has to make that commitment In many cases before they’ve really kind of adequately tried on the experience to see if it's for them.”

• [28:29] Call to action

  • “We're also asking individuals and organizations to help us build that directory of the community permitting resources by sharing the website address and contact information for communities that offer permits so that we can help populate that and make that more viable and robust.”