The walks often give me a reason to get up and get out in the morning rather than hiding. Towards sustainable community-health enhancing interventions

Abstract

Physical activity (PA) community-based programmes are increasingly put forward to promote active, healthy lifestyles and bring about long-lasting benefits to beneficiaries. Programme sustainability refers to the maintenance of an intervention beyond the initial time, resources, or other inputs to support it. A range of factors contribute to sport/PA programme sustainability; however, research often overlooks the critical ingredients to long-lasting interventions. This study explores the elements that promote, or hinder sustainability of a walking-based intervention addressed to caregivers and care-recipients in Kent, United Kingdom. Drawing on interviews and focus group data with organisers and participants, findings were grouped under three overarching themes: Benefits on social and mental well-being, factors facilitating programme engagement and key implementation considerations. In discussing these findings in context, we provide implications for the sustainable planning and implementation of future community sport and PA programmes.

Keywords:

• Programme sustainability
• physical activity interventions
• walking
• caregivers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).