 | |
| Founded | 1991 |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-profit |
| Headquarters | London, UK |
Region | United Kingdom |
| Fields | Fitness |
Key people |
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| Website | www |
ukactive is a not-for-profit industry association, promoting the interests of commercial fitness gyms and community leisure centres, [1] with more than 3500 organisations in membership. ukactive's central stated vision is to get more people, more active, more often and to improve the nation's health by promoting active lifestyles. [2]
ukactive originated as the Fitness Industry Association (FIA), which was founded in 1991 as a trade organisation for the fitness sector. Its stated aims were "to promote a healthier and more physically active nation through raising standards within the health and fitness industry". The FIA organised an annual 'Commit to get fit' campaign that raised awareness to member organisations to take part and to also raise money for charity, while the FIA's links with the NHS gave it added credibility.
In April 2011, David Stalker was appointed as the new chief executive officer of the FIA, having served as 'Executive Director' since 2009. He replaced Andree Deane. Stalker oversaw the rebranding of the FIA into ukactive at the 2012 ukactive Summit, developing the organisation into a sector representative health body that champions the cause of physical activity, health and wellbeing. David Stalker left in 2015, and is now running Oxygen Freejumping. [3]
ukactive's chief executive officer is Huw Edwards, who was appointed to the role in 2019. Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson is currently ukactive's chair. The Paralympian and crossbench peer has been a vocal advocate of physical activity throughout her sporting and political career.
The other current members of the ukactive Board are:
ukactive governance also includes several sub-committees, who represent the various facets of the organisation's landscape in an advisory role to the main board. These include:
Andrew Lansley is an adviser. [7] Current partners include Sport England, Argos, DHL, Coca-Cola, Essex County Council, Legal & General and the National Childbirth Trust.
The Research Institute aims to bridge the evidence gap between traditional laboratory-based 'exercise is medicine' research and real world interventions.
The core aim of the research team is to generate academic publications and conduct research which will contribute to answering fundamental questions related to how to get 'more people, more active, more often'. [8]
Promising Practice 2 is a project conducted by the ukactive Research Institute. In collaboration with the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine and Public Health England, it is seeking to identify physical activity programmes that demonstrate good and promising practice in local communities, through surveys. This is the second iteration of the Promising Practice project; In July 2014, a total of 952 survey responses were submitted for phase one of the project. [9]
Turning the Tide was a 2013 report that sought to measure and highlight the rising levels of physical inactivity in the UK. It found that one in four people in England fail to achieve more than 30 minutes’ moderate physical activity over 28 days, yet local authorities spent just 2.4 per cent of public health budgets on inactivity. The release of this report was welcomed by David Cameron who was quoted in the report saying "Turning the tide of inactivity is essential to the health of our nation" [10] MP Andy Burnham also advocated the report at the ukactive National Summit 2014. [11] It led to a doubling on local authority public health spending on England's 'inactivity epidemic', and also preceded the launch of 'Move More, Live More', a Government commitment to reduce the nation's physical inactivity levels. The report saw ukactive awarded 'Trade Body Campaign of the Year' at the Public Affairs Awards 2014. [12]
Generation Inactive, published in 2015, established the scale of childhood physical inactivity in the UK. It explored the current understanding of children's physical activity in primary schools and investigated the measures that are used to track the activity and fitness levels of pupils, finding that just 40% of schools accurately tracked their pupils' fitness levels. It offered several recommendations to government, schools and the activity sector in how to reverse the trend of physical inactivity in young people. [13]
The Rise of the Activity Sector was released in October 2016, [14] and was the first report to analyse and estimate the value of the activity sector as a whole, based on analyses made by valuation specialist Mazars and sponsorship experts Nielsen Sports. It estimated that the gym sector would be worth £7.7 billion by the end of 2016, representing year-on-year growth of 17 per cent. [15]
Blueprint for an Active Britain was released in November 2015 and set out the key changes required in Britain's physical activity landscape to inspire a more active nation. The recommendations and ideas in the report presented a system-wide roadmap for promoting physical activity for everyone, and a partnership approach to prevent the debilitating spread of physical inactivity. It was supported by Lord Ara Darzi, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal Society for Public Health, the Nuffield Trust, Mind and Age UK.[ citation needed ] Many of these ideas have been incorporated into the Government's own policy paper: Sporting Future – A New Strategy for an Active Nation, [16] as well as Sport England's subsequent strategy Towards an Active Nation. The follow-up to this report was the November 2016 Blueprint for an Active Britain: Milestone Review, [17] which analysed the progress made in the post-Blueprint landscape. It outlined fresh, practical policy recommendations across a range of areas that Government and other key stakeholders including ukactive should work towards in the future.
The organisation is actively involved with local authorities in the United Kingdom in developing plans to increase physical activity. [18]
ukactive's Public Affairs department engages with central government, including parliamentarians and ministers to highlight the importance of the physical activity agenda.
Major policy recommendations led by the ukactive Public Affairs department include:
Phonographic Performance Ltd is the UK-based music licensing company which grants copyright licenses for the public performance of recorded music. Over a four-year period ukactive has negotiated, [33] and continues to negotiate to prevent large increases to PPL licensing as seen in other nations.
Physical education, often abbreviated to Phys. Ed. or PE, and sometimes informally referred to as gym class or simply just gym, is a subject taught in schools around the world. PE is taught during primary and secondary education and encourages psychomotor, cognitive, and effective learning through physical activity and movement exploration to promote health and physical fitness. When taught correctly and in a positive manner, children and teens can receive a storm of health benefits. These include reduced metabolic disease risk, improved cardiorespiratory fitness, and better mental health. In addition, PE classes can produce positive effects on students' behavior and academic performance. Research has shown that there is a positive correlation between brain development and exercising. Researchers in 2007 found a profound gain in English Arts standardized test scores among students who had 56 hours of physical education in a year, compared to those who had 28 hours of physical education a year.
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Nursing in the United Kingdom has a long history. The current form of nursing is often considered as beginning with Florence Nightingale who pioneered modern nursing. Nightingale initiated formal schools of nursing in the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The role and perception of nursing has dramatically changed from that of a handmaiden to the doctor to professionals in their own right. There are over 700,000 nurses in the United Kingdom and they work in a variety of settings, such as hospitals, health centres, nursing homes, hospices, communities, military, prisons, and academia, with most working for the National Health Service (NHS). Nurses work across all demographics and requirements of the public: adults, children, mental health, and learning disability. Nurses work in a range of specialties from the broad areas of medicine, surgery, theatres, and investigative sciences such as imaging. Nurses also work in large areas of sub-specialities such as respiratory, diabetes, cancer, neurology, infectious diseases, liver, research, cardiac, women's health, sexual health, emergency and acute care, gastrointestinal, infection prevention and control, neuroscience, ophthalmic, pain and palliative, and rheumatology. Nurses often work in multi-disciplinary teams but increasingly are found working independently.
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom provide emergency care to people with acute illness or injury and are predominantly provided free at the point of use by the four National Health Services (NHS) of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is only free to UK residents and a charge may be made to those not entitled to free NHS care.
Healthcare in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter, with England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each having their own systems of publicly funded healthcare, funded by and accountable to separate governments and parliaments, together with smaller private sector and voluntary provision. As a result of each country having different policies and priorities, a variety of differences have developed between these systems since devolution.
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Healthcare in England is mainly provided by the National Health Service (NHS), a public body that provides healthcare to all permanent residents in England, that is free at the point of use. The body is one of four forming the UK National Health Service as health is a devolved matter; there are differences with the provisions for healthcare elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and in England it is overseen by NHS England. Though the public system dominates healthcare provision in England, private health care and a wide variety of alternative and complementary treatments are available for those willing and able to pay.
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom, comprising the National Health Service in England, NHS Scotland and NHS Wales. Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland was created separately and is often locally referred to as "the NHS". The original three systems were established in 1948 as part of major social reforms following the Second World War. The founding principles were that services should be comprehensive, universal and free at the point of delivery—a health service based on clinical need, not ability to pay. Each service provides a comprehensive range of health services, provided without charge for people ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom apart from dental treatment and optical care. In England, NHS patients have to pay prescription charges; some, such as those aged over 60, or those on certain state benefits, are exempt.
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Active mobility, soft mobility, active travel, active transport or active transportation is the transport of people or goods, through non-motorized means, based around human physical activity. The best-known forms of active mobility are walking and cycling, though other modes include running, rowing, skateboarding, kick scooters and roller skates. Due to its prevalence, cycling is sometimes considered separately from the other forms of active mobility.
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