In Spring 2024, we launched our ‘Bridging the gap’ report, focusing on understanding how to better support people with living with long-term conditions to become more physically active. The report includes insights from individuals with lived experiences and those who support them, such as healthcare professionals, carers, and sports and physical activity professionals and more!
To design effective support for people with long term conditions to manage their mental and physical health, we need to meet them where they are and make activity feel meaningful and achievable. This report highlights the importance of physical activity, lived experience motivators and barriers, trusted sources of information, the need for practical guidance to support professionals, and the importance of charity involvement in We Are Undefeatable. From this research, we have identified the next steps for We Are Undefeatable in response to the insights gathered.
A key insight is that there is a potential ‘empathy gap’: while individuals with long-term conditions cite pain and low energy as the main barriers to be active, professional audiences (sport, government, family, carers etc) often focus on factors like cost and motivation.
Bridging the Gap: Infographic and Executive Summary
We Are Undefeatable's 'Big Talk' infographic and exec summary - you can use these for an overview of key findings from the full report.
How you can utilise and embed the insights
There is a lot in this report for us to take forward as we design the next phase of the We Are Undefeatable campaign. But the campaign, is only part of the solution. We need all professionals, organisations, local and national, across all sectors to play a part in encouraging and enabling people with long term conditions to move more. This is why the Richmond Group of Charities will be building on the findings from the Bridging the gap report by calling for action amongst national policymakers.
We have created a We Are Undefeatable dashboard with all the insights and data from the Bridging the Gap report, so you can dive deeper and filter aspects of the data for further interpretation. The dashboard is available to any organisation or individual interested in these insights. Please review the guidance on the welcome page to support you with using the dashboard.
We want to encourage those who support people living with long term health conditions to read and share this report and the summary infographic with your colleagues and networks, and consider how the insights may apply to your work and communications.
If you are interested in finding out more based on your organisational or professional priorities, please get in touch with us at [email protected].
Bridging the Gap: Full Report
We Are Undefeatable's full 'Big Talk' report - findings from our 2023 public consultation to understand what is most needed to support people living with long-term health conditions to get active and to help shape the future of We Are Undefeatable.