The proportion of physically inactive EU citizens who live an unhealthy lifestyle remains unacceptably high. According to the 2018 Eurobarometer on sport and physical activity, 46% of EU citizens do not exercise or play sport at all, while more and more Europeans eat unhealthily and suffer chronically from stress. In the past 50 to 70 years, generations of us did not learn about the health & prevention guidelines that research now offers, so it’s time for a knowledge update. Not only for the consumer, but especially for professionals who work with consumers in the healthcare, sports and lifestyle sectors.
That’s why New Health started in the beginning of 2019 with the New Health 2022 Project, together with EuropeActive and 6 other partners from Belgium, Spain, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia and the Netherlands. The aim of the New Health programs is to provide sports and lifestyle organizations, professionals, volunteers and consumers with knowledge that is easy to obtain and to understand and tools to improve levels of physical activity, healthy eating, mental fitness and a healthy lifestyle. A new EuropeActive Healthy Lifestyle Promoter qualification, referenced to Level 2 of the European Qualification Framework (EQF) has also been developed as part of the project.
Within the project, the international guidelines for healthy living from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the latest research on lifestyle medicine will be translated in an overview of essential insights every human being should know, in order to have the possibility to make healthy choices.
September 16th and 17th were the first live meetings of the New Health project partners in Madrid, after one and a half years of online meetings. The goal of this meeting was to complete the trainer part of the exercise as medicine pillar, so every partner can start to educate professionals and volunteers in their own country. In November and December 2021, every education partner will be training at least 10 professionals or volunteers on this topic. The partners will use a specific presentation and a mini-documentary developed within the project on the topic of exercise as medicine.
More information on the project: go to www.new-health.eu