A Roadmap for Meeting the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans

The Department of Health and Human Services released the inaugural set of Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans just over 18 months ago. These milestone principles complement the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which have been published every five years since 1980. 

Last week, the physical activity community added a critical missing piece to the mix: the National Physical Activity Plan. This plan provides Americans with a roadmap to achieve the goals of the Physical Activity Guidelines. The intent of the plan is to make physical activity part of the fabric of our daily lives. 

While both of these guidelines are important on their own, we urge the nutrition and physical activity communities to partner together in order to champion the establishment of an “energy balance team” – an approach analogous to the health care team. Physical activity experts and nutrition experts need to integrate their educational efforts around an energy balance nexus. For example, in the National Physical Activity Plan, under tactics for public health, each state/county health department could establish a team composed of health professionals from both sides of the energy balance equation. This team would function as part of an integrated, accelerated approach to chronic-disease risk reduction.      

ACFN applauds the National Physical Activity Plans coordinating committee’s emphasis on the implementation of evidence-based interventions and the need for expansion of monitoring and surveillance of physical activity levels on both a community and an individual level.  

Another step to building an “energy balance team” is to create a corresponding companion document to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans – the National Dietary Guidelines Plan. MyPyramid is a useful educational tool, but we still need a national roadmap to ensure Americans meet the goals set by the National Dietary Guidelines. With the release of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines expected by the end of this year, ACFN urges the nutrition community to take action and work together to create such a plan and to integrate it with the National Physical Activity Plan.