Exploring active travel to increase levels of physical activity among people in mid-life

Description

Physical inactivity is one of the top risk factors for developing conditions that lead to preventable disability in later life. Yet the proportion of people who are physically inactive generally increases with age. And those who are unemployed, have a long-term condition or disability, are from black and minority ethnic groups or are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be inactive than others of the same age. These groups are thus at increased risk of poor health outcomes in later life. Ageing Better wants to understand how we can support people in mid-life to take up active travel, or to maintain or increase their levels of active travel, as a first preference for journeys - ideally making it part of their everyday lives - as one way to increase levels of physical activity. To address this, we are commissioning a research project encompassing an evidence review and primary qualitative research. The evidence review will bring together the existing evidence on who does and does not participate in active travel and what the barriers and enablers are to doing so. Qualitative research should augment the evidence review by capturing the attitudes and experiences of a diverse group of people in mid-life, giving us a richer understanding of how to encourage and support people to participate in active travel. This ITT is one of two projects that we are commissioning to initiate our work on physical activity. The second is: Understanding the experiences of physically inactive people in mid-life