Promoting healthy ageing: Physical activity, sedentary behaviour and community participation

In 2021, GreyBay Institute completed the commissioned report Promoting healthy ageing: Physical activity, sedentary behaviour and community participation for Japan's National Institute of Public Health. It was the first evidence-based policy review to integrate these three behavioural domains for a super-ageing society and was prepared to support the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's healthy-longevity strategy.

Drawing on a scoping review of 90 international studies, the report brought together evidence on physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and community participation under a five-level framework: socioeconomic status, individual factors, interpersonal factors, environment, and media/communication environment. It also identified findings especially relevant to Japan, including the strong role of temperature and rainfall, seasonal variation in intervention effects, and gender differences in preferred activities.

Based on that evidence map, GreyBay submitted four core recommendations: (1) turn the concept of an "age-friendly environment" into operational and measurable guidance, with priority on facility proximity, age-appropriate programme supply, and barrier-free public space; (2) embed self-efficacy-based capability building in long-term care prevention services to counter the norm that older adults should reduce activity; (3) incorporate seasonal rhythms into exercise prescription within integrated community care; and (4) develop digital social-support interventions for older adults living alone, especially to protect against inactivity and isolation during future public-health emergencies.

The report also identified important evidence gaps, particularly the lack of clear conceptualisation of media and communication environments as independent risk or protective factors, and limited knowledge of why people respond differently to physical-activity promotion during a pandemic. These gaps have since been included by the commissioning body in the evidence-priority list for the next phase of Health Japan 21.

GreyBay is now extending this framework through comparative policy work on Hong Kong, Singapore, and Seoul, three East Asian cities facing advanced population ageing. For enquiries about the review methods, policy toolkit, or customised regional healthy-ageing assessment services, please contact contact@greybay.org.