Research papers

World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour

Fiona Bull, Salih S Al-Ansari, Stuart Biddle, Katja Borodulin, Matthew P. Buman, Greet Cardon, Catherine Carty, Jean‐Philipp…

Objectives To describe new WHO 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour. Methods The guidelines were developed in accordance with WHO protocols. An expert Guideline Development Group reviewed evidence to assess associations between physical activity and sedentary behaviour for an agreed set of health outcomes and population groups. The assessment used and systematically updated recent relevant systematic reviews; new primary reviews addressed additional health outcomes or subpopulations. Results The new guidelines address children, adolescents, adults, older adults and include new specific recommendations for pregnant and postpartum women and people living with chronic conditions or disability. All adults should undertake 150–300 min of moderate-intensity, or 75–150 min of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or some equivalent combination of moderate-intensity and vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, per week. Among children and adolescents, an average of 60 min/day of moderate-to-vigorous intensity aerobic physical activity across the week provides health benefits. The guidelines recommend regular muscle-strengthening activity for all age groups. Additionally, reducing sedentary behaviours is recommended across all age groups and abilities, although evidence was insufficient to quantify a sedentary behaviour threshold. Conclusion These 2020 WHO guidelines update previous WHO recommendations released in 2010. They reaffirm messages that some physical activity is better than none, that more physical activity is better for optimal health outcomes and provide a new recommendation on reducing sedentary behaviours. These guidelines highlight the importance of regularly undertaking both aerobic and muscle strengthening activities and for the first time, there are specific recommendations for specific populations including for pregnant and postpartum women and people living with chronic conditions or disability. These guidelines should be used to inform national health policies aligned with the WHO Global Action Plan on Physical Activity 2018–2030 and to strengthen surveillance systems that track progress towards national and global targets.

The 2016 World Health Organization Classification of Tumors of the Central Nervous System: a summary

David N. Louis, Arie Perry, Guido Reifenberger, Andreas von Deimling, Dominique Figarella-Branger, Webster K. Cavenee, Hirok…

Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research, and Practice

Health behavior change is our greatest hope for reducing the burden of preventable disease and death around the world. Tobacco use, sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy diet, and alcohol use together account for almost one million deaths each year in the United States alone. Smoking prevalence in the United States has dropped by half since the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health was published in 1964, but tobacco use still causes over 400,000 premature deaths each year. The World Health Organization has warned that the worldwide spread of the tobacco epidemic could claim one billion lives by the end of this century. The rising prevalence of childhood obesity could place the United States at risk of raising the first generation of children to live sicker and die younger than their parents, and the spreading epidemic of obesity among children and adults threatens staggering global health and economic tolls. The four leading behavioral risks factors and a great many others (for example, nonadherence to prescribed medical screening and prevention and disease management practices, risky sexual practices, drug use, family and gun violence, worksite and motor vehicle injuries) take disproportionate tolls in low-income and disadvantaged racial and ethnic populations, as well as in low-resource communities across the world. Addressing these behavioral risks and disparities, and the behaviors related to global health threats, such as flu pandemics, water shortages, increasingly harmful sun exposure, and the need to protect the health of the planet itself, will be critical to world health in the twenty-first century. In the past two decades since the publication of the first edition of Health Education and Health Behavior: Theory, Research, and Practice in 1990, there has been extraordinary growth in our knowledge about interventions needed to change health behaviors at both individual and population levels. This progress can be measured in the proliferation of science-based recommendations issued by authoritative evidence review panels, including the U.S. Clinical Preventive Services Task Force, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control Task Force on Community Preventive Services, and the international Cochrane Collaboration. Today, there are evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for most major behavioral health risks, including tobacco use, unhealthy diet, sedentary lifestyle, risky drinking, and diabetes management. And there are parallel research-based guidelines for the health care system changes and policies needed to assure their delivery and use. New community practice guidelines offer additional evidence-based recommendations for a wide array of population-level school-, worksite-, and community-based programs and public policies to improve vaccination rates and physical activity levels for children and adults, improve diabetes self-management, reduce harmful sun exposure, reduce secondhand smoke exposure, prevent youth tobacco use and help adult smokers quit, reduce workplace and motor vehicle injuries, and curb drunk driving and family and gun violence.