Your weekly physical activity bulletin

18 February 2025

We are working towards improving the health and wellbeing of the nation through sport, exercise and physical activity. For more information on our work visit our website or follow us on X @NCSEM_PAnews

Funding to enable more children to walk and wheel to school

Living Streets has been awarded £5m from Active Travel England to boost the number of children walking or wheeling to school. The charity’s ‘Walk to School Outreach’ programme has been helping more families choose cleaner and healthier ways to travel to school for many years.  

During the 23-24 financial year, participating schools enjoyed a 22.5 percentage point shift from pupils being driven all the way to school to walking, wheeling or other forms of active transport, creating 9.3 million new walking journeys and removing 1.8 million car km from the roads at peak times.  

New study: Health benefits of leisure-time physical activity by socioeconomic status, lifestyle risk, and mental health, and how they may differ across population subgroups

There is evidence to support that higher levels of physical activity are associated with a greater number of disease-free years, (but the range of diseases included as outcomes varied considerably, and few studies conducted subgroup analyses). This study aimed to assess these benefits by measuring the number of years lived without major non-communicable diseases across groups with different levels of risk factors.

The Institute of Sport Exercise and Health’s (ISEH) Professor Mark Hamer, Chair in Sport and Exercise Medicine and dedicated researcher, was a co-author of a study exploring the Health benefits of leisure-time physical activity by socioeconomic status, lifestyle risk, and mental health, and how they might differ across population subgroups.

How can our sector support those who are NEET back into learning or into work?

By targeting those who are not in employment, education or training (NEET), the sport and physical activity sector can be driving force to increase rates of employment and support economic growth.

Following on from the recent publication of the government’s Get Britain Working White Paper, which aims to support those locked out of work due to long-term sickness, and young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) into the workplace, CIMSPA explore how our sector can feed into this work and open up opportunities to those who may not have previously thought about a career in sport and physical activity.

New research proves woodland wildlife does wonders for wellbeing

The sights, sounds and smells of life in a British woodland have been proven to fill us with joy and boost our wellbeing, groundbreaking new research has revealed.

An overwhelming 90% of more than 10,000 questioned for a study supported by the Woodland Trust said their mood and general wellbeing were boosted by the wildlife in the UK’s precious woodland.

The research identified specific mood-lifting traits found in woods – from spotting a squirrel scurrying up a trunk and hearing a robin’s early-morning song, to witnessing a bird of prey soaring in the sky or feeling the crunch of autumn leaves underfoot.

The weekly physical activity bulletin in a summary of news stories that appear across the physical activity sector. The National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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