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National Safe Work Month

Key events

October is National Safe Work Month – a time for workplaces to consider how they can build a safe and healthy workplace for all Australians. This year, Safe Work Australia’s theme for Safe Work Month is ‘Be a Safety Champion’. This is meant to encourage employers and workers from all occupations and industries to become a champion for work health and safety. Everyone can support a safety culture at their workplace and promote best practice work health and safety initiatives. SafeWork Australia’s website has a great list of what’s on in your state or territory. BeUpstanding is a featured resource being promoted for National Safe Work Month! SafeWork Australia has been a long- time supporter of BeUpstanding and is one of five partners in our recent NHMRC parternship grant. This grant has given us funding for a national implementation trial of the BeUpstanding Champion Toolkit. As part of the implementation trial we are able to offer champions free coaching by our expert team and customised data feedback reports. It really is a great time to Be Upstanding!

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“Sit less—move more and more often”: all physical activity is beneficial for longevity

Latest evidence

This article was originally published in the BMJ Opinion on 21st August 2019. New research shows that any level of movement decreases risk of premature death, so get moving say Ulf Ekelund and Thomas Yates It is well established that physical activity of a moderate or vigorous intensity (such as brisk walking) is good for your health. More recently, it has also been shown that people in contemporary societies are spending the majority of their day sitting, and that this prolonged sitting is also linked to an increased risk for many chronic diseases and premature death. Current physical activity recommendations, including those recently updated for the US, suggest that at least 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity physical activity is needed to keep healthy and that prolonged sitting should be avoided. However, how much sitting is too much? This is not specified and is widely debated. In addition, are levels of physical activity below those recommended still beneficial for health and does light intensity physical activity still count? Answering these questions have huge relevance for health promotion. We performed a study to address these questions. Our results suggest strong associations between total physical activity and the risk of dying.…

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Direct Healthcare Costs Of Sedentary Behaviour In The UK

News and Events

The following press release originally appeared on the BMJ Newsroom and was published on March 23rd 2019. Spending large amounts of time sitting or lounging around during the day is linked to around 70,000 deaths per year in the UK and the NHS spends in excess of £0.7bn per year treating the health consequences, suggests research from Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. A large proportion of the UK population have sedentary jobs and leisure activities, and official physical activity recommendations regarding sedentary behaviour are vague. Previous studies have shown that spending large parts of the day sitting down increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and death and is a burden on health services. But no estimate of the financial impact that sedentary behaviour has on the NHS has been calculated, so the authors set out to do just that. Figures calculated by other researchers on the impact sedentary behaviour has on the relative risks of five specific health conditions (type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, colon cancer, endometrial cancer and lung cancer) and deaths from all causes were combined with figures on the percentage of adults…

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BeUpstanding™ is now live!

BeUpstanding Stories

After nearly two years of behind the scenes work, and building on more than a decade of evidence, the team at BeUpstanding™ are very excited to let you know that the toolkit is now live and recruiting! In this “soft launch” phase of the toolkit, we are really keen to hear from YOU – the champions, workers, and organisations about your experiences with the toolkit. This will help us to continue to improve the toolkit and resources for other champions and their teams. So – sign up now! and don’t forget to also follow and like our Instagram.

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