The Public Pledge by the Fitness Sector

In November 2010, at the association's London Summit, the European health and fitness sector made a public pledge on physical activity. It was a written commitment by the sector as an industry, made in front of the European Commission and based on evidence the sector had gathered itself.

The summit ran over 22 and 23 November 2010 and drew over 70 delegates from across Europe and beyond it. It was addressed by Jacob Kornbeck of the European Commission's DG EAC Sport Unit and by Prof. Dr Harold (Bill) Kohl III, president of the International Society of Physical Activity and Health. The occasion was also the release of the executive summary of Becoming the Hub, the EU-funded project that had examined the fitness sector's place in the effort to get citizens active.

The pledge began from the evidence the project had gathered. It recorded the sector's position that its resources and skills - facilities, staff, and access to large numbers of people - gave it a part to play in helping citizens reach the EU Guidelines on Physical Activity. It committed the industry to building a framework of action for mass participation in exercise, resting on professional collaboration and coordination between agencies, and aimed at integrated policies, campaigns and shared recommendations on best practice. Its object was the association's standing one: more people, more active, more often.

The delegates discussed the executive summary's recommendations, agreed them, and then signed the pledge. The project did not end with the summit: the final report and its recommendations were submitted to the European Commission in February 2011.

A pledge is a weak instrument in most policy settings, and the sector's choice of one was deliberate. The health and fitness industry had no treaty basis, no budget line and no formal standing in European policy; what it had was the ability to reach people directly, where they already were. Committing publicly to use that reach, and to do it in coordination with public health bodies rather than in competition with them, was a way of asking to be treated as part of the health workforce rather than as a leisure trade.

The pledge was also written to be checkable. It named a target - the EU Guidelines on Physical Activity - and the means of reaching it: a framework of action, professional collaboration, coordination between agencies, and campaigns and recommendations developed with others rather than in the sector's own name. A commitment of that shape can be reported against, and it was made at a summit where the European Commission was present to hear it.

The pledge and the project behind it sit with the association's European affairs work and its EU-funded projects. The summit was recorded in the association's news and press channels, and the sector's priorities for the following year were set out at the Brussels industry summit in November 2011.