Proposal to Expand UWALK ’s Reach in Rural Alberta Communities (poster)

Publication date: December 2017 Source:Journal of Transport & Health, Volume 7, Supplement Author(s): Erin Gorman, Christina Loitz, Monique Assi, Kerry Mummery Background Walking has many benefits and has been established as an ideal focus of public health promotion to increase physical activity. Rural communities, in particular, are an underserved population that have unique barriers and facilitators to engaging in walking and require tailored initiatives. Description of Program UWALK is a promising theory-informed community-wide eHealth initiative to promote physical activity, which is uniquely suited to support rural communities. The community specific features, free online access, and focus on walking that requires little training and equipment makes UWALK a suitable health promotion tool for the rural context. UWALK was originally developed in 2013 by the University of Alberta with funding from Alberta Health and is being transitioned to Alberta Health Services (AHS) for sustained administration. AHS highlighted rural engagement as a priority during this transition and is developing a strategy to expand the initiative’s reach to rural communities. Lessons Learned To date the program has not had a specific strategy targeting rural users, however, previous engagement of rural community libraries and in-person promotion has shown promise. To build upon this, various strategies, approaches and resources were identified in the literature and proposed: Develo...
Source: Journal of Transport and Health - Category: Occupational Health Source Type: research