A new study has revealed that participating in Parkrun, a weekly 5-kilometer social run or walk, significantly benefits life satisfaction among the least active individuals. This community-based public health intervention has the potential to be a cost-effective solution in combating physical inactivity, which is considered one of the leading risk factors for noncommunicable diseases. The findings highlight the importance of creating accessible and engaging physical activity initiatives that can reach and positively impact those who are the least active in our society. Physical activity and public health initiatives like Parkrun are crucial in promoting overall well-being and reducing the burden of noncommunicable diseases.
Why Parkrun is Such a Great Thing for the Inactive
Carried out by researchers at Sheffield Hallam University and The Universities of Sheffield, the research investigated how participation in Parkrun — a free, weekly 5km run held in parks across seven countries – affected life satisfaction amongst 548 newly registered runners over a six-month period. The results were striking: Those who moved the least showed by far the greatest gains in happiness, their average life satisfaction scores going up by 0.768 full points on a scale of 0 to 10.
This increase was the greatest of all activity-level groups assessed, illustrating important implications for a population that is often least active and suggesting that Parkrun participation may provide potentially transformational changes to the people of interest. In a related commentary article, Kumar and coauthors suggest that although for the least active participants, the run may represent an alternative physically-active time to sitting, more active groups would likely substitute rather than add running to existing sedentary activities highlighting the importance of targeting least active individuals in public health interventions.
Parkrun: An accessible strategy for improving fitness
The work by researchers used the WELLBY (well-being adjusted life years) approach, which values one point change in life satisfaction per person per year at approximately £13,000. Most Active benefits-cost ratios for parks in vivo In contrast the benefit-cost ratios for partrun of perceived greatest effect across the entire sample ranged from 31.7 to 1 to 98.5 to 1, and benefit costs were particularly highi for the least active participants (Table results).
These figures indicate that for each pound spent on Parkrun, the return reflected in well-being benefits is £98.5 per person among those who took part the least. The overall potential economic benefits–based on a half-year of participation, as England’s Parkrun started in June 2019–for the UKs 2019 Parkrun (roughly 400,000 participants) was estimated by the team to total £266.3 million. When you take in to account that it only cost £4.5million to put on, in terms of the huge return that is a fantastic figure for one intervention around physical activity at population scale and should position Parkrun as one of the best value public health interventions.
How Parkrun Can Inform the Design of Physical Activity Interventions
The researchers acknowledge the unique design of Parkrun as a key driver of its ability to recruit and retain least active participants. The regularity of the event, the no-cost entry and the ‘everyone welcome’ approach to participation creates a space for those who are often least active.
Parkrun’s social engagement dimension, when paired with these characteristics, help emphasize the need for physical activity initiatives to be designed in ways that appeal to and accommodate the wants and needs of those who face greatest challenge in being physically active. Through the creation of enabling environments that effectively prove effective in incentivizing individuals to adopt and sustain healthier behaviours, such efforts can help substantially alleviate the burden of noncommunicable diseases.
