| Introduction: The alarming global trend toward sedentary living and obesity continues to accelerate. Obesity-related hypokinetic disorders such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, diverse cancers, hypertension, and musculoskeletal disorders comprise the principal causes of morbidity and mortality in developed nations. Irrefutable evidence links increasing regular activity with risk reduction for the most common and deadly chronic diseases. Objective: This initiative’s objective was to develop a simple, broadly-embraced activity module using a Delphi panel process for shared vision and collective action. Methods: An international Delphi panel developed a walking module using e-surveys. The 96 panelists included college and university presidents, academic officers, researchers, and leaders of health-related organizations including the World Health Organization, the International Red Cross, the World Federation of Chiropractic as well as other chiropractic organizations, the World Federation for Mental Health, the Alliance for Health Promotion and many others. Results: All draft slides achieved the requisite 75% consensus on the initial round of voting with a mean approval rating of 95%. Many partnering organizations have placed Just Start Walking on their websites and are actively encouraging their constituencies to participate.
Discussion and Conclusion: The Delphi process was successful in creating shared vision of the need for increasing activity levels. Achieving campaign sustainability will be critical. This abstract is reproduced with the permission of the publisher. Click on the above link for free full text. Link to PDF version.
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