Physical Activity Counselling Toolkit

So I feel a little like blowing my own horn today.
As some of you may know, the Centre here has launched the new Physical Activity Counselling Toolkit.

I can proudly say I headed up this project, and had some fantastic help from my co-workers and from the advisory committee. I encourage you to check out our new toolkit... but also to keep an eye out for our translated versions, likely coming this fall.

The Alberta Centre for Active Living had been approached by various practitioners (e.g., exercise physiologist), requesting a need for resources and tools that would help them do physical activity counseling. So this project came out of a direct need from practitioners.

This was tough, but rewarding project. I was shocked at how much time each resource took to create. We wanted to make sure the content was based on the latest research. Plus we wanted to ensure that the information was written to best promote behaviour change ( this meant I had to brush up on my behaviour change theories- no easy feat).

We also wanted to make sure that each resources was written in very plain language and actually useful to practitioners. To achieve this, it required evaluating the readability of each resources and subsequent drafts. It also meant having the resources evaluated by practitioners and the clients they work with.

So, yes a lot of work. But the feed back we have been getting from across Canada and even around the world (that's right, folks in UK, Australia and South Africa have contacted us), has been outstanding.

This basically shows that resources like these are needed. The sweat, blood and tears that went into these was definitely worth it. Now... we just need to hunt down further funding so we can add to this collection.

I encourage you to check out our toolkit and please feel free to share your comments with me.