Organization of The Plan
PAA’s National Physical Activity Plan (NPAP) is organized by Overarching Priorities, Strategies, Tactics, and Objectives for each of 10 societal sectors. Description of these four elements are listed below:
Overarching Priorities
A set of initiatives that the Physical Activity Alliance views as critical to moving the physical activity and public health field forward and accomplishing the overall goal of increasing physical activity in the U.S. population. These priorities are relevant to all components of The Plan.
Strategies
Broad, evidence-informed approaches of each sector of PAA’s NPAP designed to promote physical activity through actions.
Tactics
Specific evidence-informed policy, environment, and systems changes that support the Strategies of each sector of PAA’s NPAP.
Objectives
Measurable outcomes associated with specific sectors of PAA’s NPAP Tactics that should be attained within a specified time period.
To priorities, strategies, tactics, and objectives of the NPAP are rooted in the following guiding principles:
- The Plan is grounded in a socio-ecological model of health behavior. In this model, physical activity behavior is influenced by a broad constellation of factors operating at the personal, family, institutional, community and policy level, and sustainable behavior change is most likely when influences at all the levels are aligned to support change.
- The Plan includes recommendations for actions at the national, state, and local levels, but fundamentally is a roadmap for community-level that facilitates personal behavior change.
- The Plan’s initiatives are evidence-based, with findings ranging from controlled research studies to best practice models.
- The Plan focuses on strategies for increasing the types and amounts of physical activity recommended by current public health guidelines, in addition to reducing sedentary-time.
PAA’s National Physical Activity Plan undergoes revision every several years by 10 standing sector committees composed of experts on initiatives to promote physical activity in their given sector. In between revision periods, these committees engage in work identifying metrics for evaluation of Plan implementation and commissioning special projects which support their sector’s Strategies.
Descriptions of each committee’s work and expert members can be found on the landing page for each of the 10 sectors.