World Health Organization and physical activity (2018)

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a respected name as the global leader in the fight against critical health challenges such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and noncommunicable diseases. Because of the great impact of WHO in influencing various health matters, there is wide interest and intensive effort to include new and important health issues in the working processes of WHO for acceptance to its agenda. One of these issues is promotion of physical activity to improve health. This article describes some key aspects of the structure and decision-making processes of WHO at mainly global level by examining the growth in the WHO’s emphasis on promoting physical activity over the last 5 decades. Initially, there was only weak and temporary interest in physical activity beginning in the 1960s, but currently, it is a topic that has warranted a comprehensive global action plan. The article comments on some of the key factors of this progress, including the increase during the 1980s and 1990s in the WHO’s emphasis on health promotion; the recognition of noncommunicable diseases as one of the main global health challenges in the 2000s; the widening of the understanding of the contents of and opportunities offered by physical activity for health; increased scientific evidence of the multiple benefits of physical activity to individual, population, community and environmental health, and persistent advocacy of a great number of leading researchers and established organizations around the world.