Increasing Physical Activity for Health One Cultural Critique at a Time

Abstract

The 2008 Guidelines for Physical Activity for Americans and the National Physical Activity Plan are recently available tools for use by practitioners and scholars in developing and evaluating programs and interventions to increase physical activity across all populations. With the lowest rates of health-benefiting physical activity according to national statistics, targeted communities are often low-income and ethnic minority populations experiencing a chronic disease burden. The aims of this paper are to raise issues about the need for greater sociocultural critique of evidence-basis and other scientific parameters, to comment on the need for the inclusion of sociocultural analysis in physical activity assessment and intervention, and to raise some issues related to the need for kinesiology to deepen its relationship to the physical activity public health sector.