Physical activity is an important contributor to good health, including reducing the risk of chronic disease and promoting healthy weight and good mental health. In Queensland, physical activity levels have increased 15% over the past 10 years (walking increased 100 minutes on average per week!), but they are still 9% below the national average.
The 10,000 Steps program is a highly recognised, evidence-based, multi-strategy initiative that aims to raise awareness and has proven to increase participation in physical activity by encouraging the accumulation of physical activity as part of everyday living.
For more than 20 years, the program has supported individuals, workplaces and communities' health and wellbeing by increasing physical activity levels through encouraging the use of steps counters (pedometers) or activity trackers, as well as the delivery of information and resources via interactive 10,000 Steps web and mobile applications, with support from the project office.
The program's interactive platforms are designed using evidence-based behaviour change techniques to support individuals to monitor and track their physical activity. The program's implementation strategies align with the Social Ecological Model supporting physical activity at the individual, social, organisation, community and policy level.
10,000 Steps is a free physical activity program delivered by CQUniversity and proudly funded by the Queensland Government through Health and Wellbeing Queensland and Preventive Health SA, Government of SA.
The following summarise some main achievements of the program (as at end 2021).
Individuals
Empowering individuals to become and stay physically active.
- > 550,000 members registered
- Gender: Male 31% | Female 69%
- Location: Major city 57% | Regional 40% | Remote 3%
- Average age: 41 years
Keeps you mindful of the need to keep moving in our aim to meet our daily step goal challenge… MOTIVATION!"
Workplaces
Providing resources and support to workplaces to promote physical activity and to create environments that foster healthy workers and healthy places.
- Of the 18,000 organisations who have signed up, 80% use the program to promote physical activity to their staff. The types of organisations include all sizes of workplace small (20%), medium (45%) and large (35%), all 20 industry categories and those in Queensland are spread geographically across the State in major cities (57%), regional (39%) and remote/very remote areas (4%).
The reason my workplace participates every year is because it promotes collegiality at the same time as encouraging individuals to pay attention to their fitness. The health benefits extend beyond the programme itself as most of us carry on with good habits throughout the year, which makes us happier and more effective workers.
Communities
Encouraging healthy communities through promotion of our program and highlighting the need for creating environments that are conducive to walking.
- 20% of organisations signing up aim to promote the program to a community audience including schools, councils and clients.
Having the backing of a nationally recognised brand, such as 10,000 Steps, added strength to our strategies and made it easier to engage with communities.
Website and Mobile Applications
Delivering an interactive and free physical activity web and mobile application.
- More than 299 billion steps have been logged on the 10,000 Steps applications.
- Users can now have their activity trackers sync steps into the 10,000 Steps program from Garmin, Fitbit, Google Fit and for iOS mobile users via the Apple Health app.
- 2020-2021: 823,897 unique users visit the 10,000 Steps website, recording over 2.9 million sessions and 17.9 million page views, with users spending on average 4 minutes per session.
- Since the release of the new 10,000 Steps apps on Apple Store and Google Play in November 2017, a total of 104,891 new apps have been downloaded.
We have enjoyed the App and will continue to use it.
Tournaments
Facilitating and supporting workplaces and community groups in the delivery of team-based step Tournaments and larger-scale health lifestyle challenges.
- More than 9,900 new Tournaments have been started by Organisations included a total of more than 58,000 teams made up of 373,000 individuals who collectively have logged more than 144 billion steps during their Tournaments.
- The 10,000 Steps Tournaments are effective in increasing participants’ physical activity levels at 6 weeks (80% meet national physical activity guideline) and 18 weeks (73% meet the guideline), with participants reporting they enjoyed taking part (90%), and that they would recommend 10,000 Steps to others (90%); and organisations reporting that 10,000 Steps resources are effective at promoting (95%) and increasing physical activity (93%), as well as affordable (75%) and not time-intensive (91%) to implement.
I just wanted to send a big thank you to the team who make 10000 steps a reality for so many organisations. From what I understand the team is small, but are very responsive, worked with me to provide solutions to some issues we had (which were completely our issues not theirs), and just provide overall exceptional service.
Promotion and Collaboration
10,000 Steps is more than a program delivering behaviour change, it is a whole of community movement that aligns with many Queensland Government priorities, that promotes physical activity and improves the health of Queenslanders.
- 10,000 Steps has a strong social media footprint with 5742 Facebook, 785 Twitter and 884 Instagram followers.
- Now funded by two agencies Health and Wellbeing Queensland and Preventive Health SA to increase physical activity levels across two Australian States.
- Involvement in the development of the new Queensland Walking Strategy and the Activate! Queensland 10-year Sport and Rec Plan, as well as being highlighted as a case study by Heart Foundation’s Healthy Active By Design and included as a program recommended in the Workplace Health and Safety's Queensland's Work health and wellbeing toolkit.
Working with the 10,000 Steps team has provided opportunities for cross collaboration and promotion of both our services for the benefit of workplaces and workers. 10,000 Steps resources are promoted in the Work health and wellbeing toolkit and to our stakeholders on an ongoing basis at presentations and workshops. The opportunity to include the Work health and wellbeing toolkit in the Active Workplaces Guide is appreciated. The Active Workplaces Guide is an excellent resource for workplaces, giving them the rationale and step by step process for promoting physical activity and other chronic disease risk factors in the workplace as well as promoting other services that meet the objective of getting workers to move more.