It's a wonderful time to be in the business of promoting physical activity. There aren't many issues in the public policy arena that enjoy such a broad consensus of support across political, social, and cultural lines. Everyone agrees that physical activity is good, regular physical activity is better, and a physically active lifestyle is best!

But it is a challenging time in Washington, DC and across the nation - with dwindling public health dollars, austere budgeting, "nanny state" push-back, and the need to accomplish more with fewer resources. That is why it is more important than ever that people, organizations, government agencies, industries, and others who are interested in promoting health and wellness must come together. We need to present consistent, unified messaging, coordinate our resources, and collaborate across various sectors to create healthier environments and policies that allow people to make healthy choices.

In our efforts to implement the National Physical Activity Plan, the National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity has built a network of individuals working across eight different sectors - including education, public health, business/industry, health care, parks and recreation, and transportation - to implement the strategies and tactics laid out in this important road map. These strategies drive specific policies and programs aimed at getting people up on their feet and moving.

Business & Industry Sector

In the business and industry sector, we are working to identify, collect, and make available the best practices, models, and existing programs for physical activity in the workplace. The sector team has developed a CEO Pledge, urging corporate leaders to commit themselves and their companies to provide opportunities and access for their employees to be active before, during, and after the work day. These businesses will gain access to a valuable resource list to help shift their corporate cultures from sedentary to physically active work environments.

Education Sector

One of the education sector's strategies is to promote policies to provide access and opportunities for physical activity in after-school programming. The sector team conducted a survey to compile information on standards and guidelines for afterschool activity. They gathered data from 500 programs in 10 regions, and also looked at school districts with diverse demographic profiles. In fact, this year marked the first development and adoption of National Standards on Nutrition and Physical Activity for Afterschool Programs.

Health Sector

The health sector is working to make physical activity a "vital sign" that all health care providers assess and discuss with patients. The team is working to establish physical inactivity as a treatable and preventable condition with profound health implications. They are also developing policies to include physical activity in the education and training of all health care professionals.

The Federal government by nature of its broad reach can lead the cultural shift. The same folks who put Rosie the Riveter to work in the factories now need to help Rosie get off the couch and make the move to a physically active lifestyle. Physical activity needs to be inserted into the health policies of the entire government.

To reach the ultimate goal of creating a society of physically active children and adults, we all need to use a common voice when bringing our ideas and energy to the effort. There's something for everyone in the National Physical Activity Plan. What are you doing to help put the plan into action?

The National Physical Activity Plan is a multi-sectoral blueprint for creating a more robust culture of physical activity. It's appropriately aspirational, but grounded in practical objectives. Much like Healthy People 2020, it's great strength is its ability to unite powerful forces of change around common goals.

But the magnitude of the project - creating a cultural shift of national proportions - can feel overwhelming. So many changes need to be made in so many places. Real, measurable progress seems difficult to identify.

But like the journey of a thousand miles that begins with a single step, maybe cultural shifts of national proportions can begin with a single county.

And that county may be Greenville, South Carolina.

The folks of Greenville have created Livewell Greenville, a partnership of dozens of public and private organizations that aims to make Greenville County a healthier place to live, work, and play.

The approach of Livewell Greenville is to not only provide educational resources about healthy living, but also to create policies, systems and environments that make the healthy choice the easy choice.

The initiative focuses on seven societal buckets: at school, before and after school, at work, at the doctor, at mealtime, around town, and "for fun."

The following Livewell Greenville goals relate to physical activity:

• Provide tools to teachers to encourage physical activity during learning and throughout the day.
• Encourage more childcare providers to serve healthy meals and snacks and offer regular structured physical activity in licensed childcare centers.
• Encourage more after school providers to serve healthy meals and snacks and offer regular structured physical activity in non-licensed after school programs.
• Incentivize after school programs and childcare centers to adopt policies that support healthy eating and active living among children.
• Increase the number of work places that adopt policies and environments that support employees in staying physically active and eating healthy, nutritious food.
• Encourage health care providers to provide patients with practical referrals for healthy eating, active living, and treatment for obesity.
• Enable residents to run errands and commute on foot, by bike, or on Greenlink.
• Enable more Greenville County children to walk to school safely.
• Encourage neighborhood groups and residents to become more involved in the transportation planning process.
• Increase safety through Park Watch programs.
• Increase access to basic recreation facilities through the development of a model Complete Parks policy.
• Increase accessibility to local parks.
• Increase awareness of local facilities where residents can play and be active.

My hope is that Livewill Greenville will inspire thousands of similar community-based efforts around the country. Surely, duplicating the initiative would not be easy, and Livewelll Greenville benefits from the talents of dedicated community champions willing to invest significant time to make the initiative meaningful, but I'm willing to bet that every community has champions who are up for the challenge. Maybe every community won't succeed, but given what's at stake, it's certainly worth a try.

To follow the progress of Livewell Greenville and learn more about their inspirational community efforts, please visit livewellgreenville.org.

What are some examples of other communities dedicated to creating a healthier place to live, work, and play?

How do you measure something as far reaching as a national plan to get an entire population to be more physically active? Is the answer as simple as measuring physical activity across representative samples of the population to document how many Americans are or are not meeting federal Physical Activity Guidelines? Certainly the levels of physical activity among certain populations are logical outcomes to measure, and ones we are ultimately most interested in. But the answer is more complex - one that architects of the National Physical Activity Plan (NPAP) recognize as being critical to its overall success.

The NPAP was designed with the purpose of being actionable. From lawmaker or lobbyist to teacher or parent, the NPAP offers suggestions on how action can be taken to change the environments in which we work, live, learn, play, and commute, so they all offer easy access to physical activity. It may not be possible to evaluate the actions taken by every individual trying to advance the initiatives of the NPAP, but it is possible to measure outcomes that demonstrate the impact the NPAP is having, or not having, at national, state, and local levels. In order to determine the NPAP's impact, there is now a three-pronged evaluation effort underway.

1) At the national level, quarterly reports generated by sector-specific teams charged with implementing select recommendations from the NPAP's societal sectors will be collected to determine: Progress and barriers for each sector and for the NPAP overall; Products, programs, practice/policy changes, and media generated by the NPAP; and the level of collaboration between and among the different sectors of the NPAP.

2) Case studies of several states will be conducted to determine the extent to which the NPAP is impacting state physical activity plans, or related plans. Specifically, interviews will be conducted with key state-level representatives to determine awareness of gaps, barriers, and factors that contribute to knowledge transfer of the NPAP between national, state, and local levels, and to determine if and how the NPAP is being used within the state.

3) Additionally at state and local levels, members of the National Society of Physical Activity Practitioners in Public Health (NSPAPPH) are being surveyed to determine their opinions regarding the NPAP and motivations to use it, and changes to State plans as a result of the NPAP.

The NPAP evaluation effort is being spearheaded by the Physical Activity Policy Research Network within the Prevention Research Center at Washington University - St. Louis, with additional involvement from the Prevention Research Centers at UNC-Chapel Hill and the University of South Carolina.

How do you measure you or your organization measure your progress in improving health through physical activity?