Movement pills: movement as a natural remedy for health

The kick-off meeting of the European Movement Pills project took place in Brussels from 7 to 9 February. Uisp is the leader of this new European adventure and, together with the partners of Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Estonia and the European networks EPSI-European Platform for Sport Innovation and ISCA-International Sport and Culture Association, will develop the activities that propose the experience of Movement Pills developped by Uisp and tested for many years first in Bologna and then in various other Italian cities. The project, selected and financed by the European Commission, concerns the coherence of the Movement Pills experience with the European HEPA guidelines on the promotion of physical activity for the prevention of health and the psychophysical and social well-being of citizens.On the occasion of the kick off meeting the project coordinator Irma Preka, assisted by Matteo Mastorci co-coordinator of the project, led the introduction of the project with the description of the activities that each of the partners will have to carry out based on the assigned tasks. Raffaella Chiodo Karpinsky (UISP) curated the session aimed at illustrating how the project is connected to the EU guidelines, as well as to the WHO Global Action Plan for Physical Activity translated and diffused in Italy thanks to UISP) and its “Every movement counts” campaign. All these documents constitute important references for stakeholders involved in promoting physical activity.

To help the partners grasp the meaning and content of the methodology on which the project is based, Paola Paltretti, president of UISP Bologna, illustrated the experience carried out in her city. Were therefore exposed all the dynamics and relationships necessary to create a virtuous process not only to achieve the distribution of the Pill boxes, but also to bring more people to practice physical activity and sport, so that this is a harbinger of new habits, for more active people and healthy lifestyles. In illustrating the Italian experience, the different components of the project were also highlighted: the involvement of public institutions, communication, distribution, measurement of short, medium and long-term impact. The concept of prescription was also analyzed in its various aspects: in fact, it can be a stimulus in some specific conditions (contexts of fragility and poverty) but with the "pills" we intend to convey an invitation to become physically active even in areas not always reached by sports clubs, expanding their possibility of being known and possibly creating virtuous processes for them and the primary beneficiaries, who are sedentary citizens.

The method as a whole was presented to the partners to encourage the dissemination of the Movement Pills UISP good practice of, and was illustrated in its various aspects which will then have to be adapted to the local contexts and to the nature of partners in the countries involved.

The very heterogeneous characteristics of the partners that make up the project consortium represent a challenge that will engage UISP over the next three years in accompanying them in the development of the key concepts of the proposed methodology and process.

This first stage is part of a long journey that will see all the actors involved committed to the objective of identifying the elements useful for defining the strategies and building the processes to make the experience carried out in Italy reproducible in their own national contexts. (Raffaella Chiodo Karpinsky)