Conference Agenda
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Union1_2: Symposium: Beyond surveillance: advancing monitoring, evaluation and learning in complex physical activity policy Location: Grand Hotel Union | |
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Beyond surveillance: advancing monitoring, evaluation and learning in complex physical activity policy Physical activity promotion takes place within a complex, multi-sector policy ecosystem, where national ambitions must interact with diverse local contexts, organisational capacities and the lived realities of communities. Change emerges through dynamic interactions between policies, institutions, people and places. Many established evaluation approaches focus narrowly on programmes and interventions in isolation. Traditional tools struggle to explain how change happens across systems, why outcomes differ by context and what enables sustained, equitable improvements. Where alternative approaches exist, these may frustrate policy makers seeking brief, simple indicators. In both cases, policy makers lack the evaluative insight needed to guide adaptive action. This symposium explores this challenge and offers solutions that address the disconnect. Michael Pratt, our chair, will introduce the topic drawing distinctions between monitoring, evaluation, and learning to situate the presentations. Sven Messing addresses the challenge of evaluating physical activity policy where technical capacity amongst government officials is limited. They present a practitioner-informed toolkit that supports evaluation across diverse governance contexts. Jérémie Duciel presents a flexible evaluation framework designed to verify the structural prerequisites for successful physical activity policies. By focusing on relational dynamics rather, this approach links network governance directly to policy development. Katie Shearn shares findings from a whole-systems realist evaluation of England’s long-term, place-based systems change investment, which reshapes underlying conditions sustaining physical activity inequalities. This evaluation strengthens local learning systems and adaptive action. Peter Gelius concludes by presenting a composite instrument that assesses physical activity policy alongside other risk factors - tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy diets - emphasising its interdependence with wider health policy and the need for stronger methodological rigour and data collection. Added value: The symposium is unique in bringing together a system-wide view of physical activity policy evaluation: integrating conceptual clarity, methodological innovation and real-world application across local, subnational, national and international levels. Conclusion: Delegates will gain access and understanding of tools that strengthen approaches and system learning to ensure evaluation can practically support decision making for physical activity promotion. Key words: Practical toolkits, evaluation, monitoring, adaptation, complex systems. Presentations of the Symposium What are the key components of physical activity policy evaluation? Co-creating a toolkit for government officials and researchers Background: Evaluating public policies is challenging in physical activity promotion due to the relevance of different political sectors. Earlier research has identified a lack of technical capacity of government officials – particularly those outside the health and sport sectors – as a barrier to applying physical activity-related policy evaluation methods. This study aimed to co-create a toolkit for ex-post evaluations of physical activity policies. Methods: We employed a multi‑stage co-creation process involving a transdisciplinary research team of academics, national governments representatives, and an international organisation. A toolkit prototype was developed drawing on semi-structured expert interviews with researchers and government officials, a systematic literature search, and a focus group with EU HEPA Focal Points. To reach consensus on the key components of physical activity policy evaluation, a Delphi survey is conducted. Results: We conducted 27 interviews (average length 54 minutes; 59% female interviewees), identified 60 publications, and conducted a one-hour focus group involving 25 participants. The resulting prototype includes 28 components of physical activity policy evaluation grouped into five categories: (1) political context, (2) policy design, (3) policy implementation, (4) policy impact, (5) communicating evaluation results. Conclusions: Through a structured co-creation approach, this study produced a physical activity policy evaluation toolkit that is scientifically robust and reflects the perspectives of government officials. From a scientific perspective, the toolkit may also serve as a framework for future evaluations of physical activity policies. Funding: Funded by the European Union under Horizon Europe‘s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), grant agreement ID 101109929. A Network Governance Approach to Evaluating Structural Prerequisites for Inclusive Physical Activity Background People with disabilities are twice as likely to be physically inactive as the rest of the population. While traditional evaluations focus on program outputs, they often fail to identify the systemic root causes of this ineffectiveness. This study proposes a methodology to evaluate whether a multi-sector policy ecosystem is sufficiently coordinated to foster the institutionalization of physical activity, a critical "first stone" from which effective, durable policies emerge. Methods Based on an evaluation mandate for the Canton of Geneva, the study maps the parasport ecosystem, identifying barriers to participation. The methodology employs Social Network Analysis (SNA) to assess the importance of actors and the strength of their linkages. Data includes 22 semi-structured interviews (organizations and participants), annual reports and financial flows. This approach evaluates how organizational interactions predict policy durability Results The analysis reveals a significant governance issue. Despite high complexity requiring a central coordinator, the ecosystem remains informal and decentralized. This structural failure manifests in several ways: conflicting objectives between the sport, social, and educational sectors; a lack of coordinated offers; and spatial inequities. Conclusion This methodology offers a "diagnostic compass" for policymakers to understand why policy failures occur. By utilizing SNA and financial flow, evaluators can monitor structural conditions that enable programs to emerge and persist. Focusing on relational dynamics rather than fixed indicators this method is transferable and scalable across diverse contexts and tailored to local realities. Funding This research is funded by the Departement of social cohesion of the Canton of Geneva. Development and utilisation of a conceptual framework and maturity matrix to support the evaluation of a place-based systemic approach to tackle physical activity inequalities in England. Background and aims: Surveillance of physical activity policy shows limited improvement and persistent inequalities. Traditional intervention‑focused policies often fail because they overlook the wider social, economic and environmental systems shaping activity, sometimes worsening disparities. Internationally, systems‑based and place‑based approaches that combine structural action with individual-level support are advocated. Rapid uptake of “systems” language has led to inconsistent definitions and limited attention to values, politics and power, creating practical challenges for implementation and evaluation. This study aimed to develop a clear, theoretically grounded conceptual framework for place‑based systems working to tackle physical activity inequalities. Methods: The study was an iterative, multi‑year co-design process embedded within Sport England’s National Evaluation and Learning Partnership. Drawing on realist and developmental evaluation, the framework evolved through literature review, documentary analysis (n=48), repeated stakeholder workshops with place-based consortia (n=50) and realist synthesis. Results: The analysis generated a theory of change showing how place-based actions, system conditions and contextual factors interact through feedback loops to influence physical activity inequalities. This informed a conceptual model with three areas of action - tackling structural inequalities, strengthening community and individual capacity, and integrating physical activity across sectors - underpinned by nine cross-cutting conditions and associated maturity levels. Together, these components provide a shared framework for organising, operationalising and evaluating place-based systems work. Conclusion: The study concludes that this model offers a practical, theory-driven scaffold to support learning, align stakeholders and structure evaluation in complex, evolving system-change initiatives to tackle physical activity inequalities. This study was funded by Sport England The Public Health Index: A benchmarking tool to assess public policy on physical inactivity, tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy diets Background and aims Physical inactivity is one of the major risk factors for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), alongside tobacco use, alcohol consumption, and unhealthy diets. However, a composite instrument to systematically assess these four risk factors is currently lacking. We developed an index scoring government performance on physical activity alongside the three other risk factors and applied it to a sample of European countries. Methods We searched for existing tools for assessing policy adoption across the four risk factors. While suitable tools were identified for tobacco and alcohol, new indexes were developed for unhealthy diets and physical activity. Unlike the other three NCD areas, data for physical activity were based on government self-reports rather than independent sources. The four sub-indices were integrated into an overarching index and applied to 18 European countries. Results The highest scoring countries included the UK, Finland, Ireland, Norway, France and Lithuania, and the lowest scoring countries were Luxembourg, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. While scores for nutrition, alcohol and tobacco policy were correlated, scores for physical activity varied less, and correlated less with the scores of the other three areas. Conclusion The Public Health Index is useful for putting physical activity policy data into the larger context of countries’ general NCD policies. However, physical activity policy assessment still lags behind the other three major NCD risk factors in terms of methodological rigor and data quality, thus warranting further efforts to meet international monitoring standards and to render results more comparable. | |
