Five-year community-wide intervention in Fujisawa City increases physical activity: Results of a Keio University and Fujisawa City project to promote physical activity

The Keio University Graduate School of Health Management and Sports Medicine Research Center partnered with the Fujisawa City and Fujisawa City Health and Medical Foundation to implement “Fujisawa Plus 10 (+10) Project,” which sought to promote a community-wide increase of physical activity in Fujisawa City in the 2013 academic year.

After examining the initiatives over the five-year period to 2018, a research team led by Keio University found that physical activity had increased, particularly among senior citizens who were the primary target population of the study. The results were published in Preventive Medicine, an international journal concerned with the field of preventive medicine.

The following in particular were decisive factors that led to these results.

• Cooperation between the related organizations to implement multifaceted approaches across the population in the entire region based upon each of their main roles: Keio University contributing “research”; Fujisawa City supplying “policy”; and the Fujisawa City Health and Medical Foundation providing “implementation.”

• Review of information dissemination strategy, with an emphasis placed on the popularization of group exercise where individuals gather in familiar places and on a regular basis. The research team’s generation and incorporation into policymaking of insights into the broadening of support for the creation and sustainment of group exercise, combined with the expansion of a Fujisawa City municipal group exercise registry system, etc., facilitated reach to a multitude of residents.

You can access the paper from the following URL:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2021.106708

Full press release (Japanese only)

https://www.keio.ac.jp/ja/press-releases/files/2021/9/30/210930-1.pdf