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Table 1 Quotes that exemplify positive uses and challenges

From: In-depth interviews with state public health practitioners on the United States National Physical Activity Plan

Positive uses

Exemplary quotes

Challenges

Exemplary quotes

Usefulness

“… there wasn’t a whole lot of focus put on the physical activity components of some of the grants. It was more like nutrition, nutrition, nutrition. And now we’re adding physical activity right up there as an equal partner. So I think that probably helped a lot.”

Not as useful

“We can talk about the strategies that are outlined in the plan, but finding kind of those meeting points between health and community design sometimes are very difficult.”

“…it gave us more of a focus area for things that we would want our grantees to focus on…”

“I still wonder how we all want to see this really being effective and who is it for? And I think those are huge questions, like who is this really for? If it’s for the general public, then we really need to nail it down. If it’s really kind of a document for people like you and I that do this work, then I think the format that it is, is going to work fine.”

“the strategy language and the goal language and so forth. That's been very helpful”

“…we used [the NPAP] to help devise our plan as far as what we were going to do for programming at the state level and grants to the local level.”

Simplicity

“I think that it's a fairly concise document for the amount of information that it includes, but … and so for someone who doesn't have a lot of background in physical activity, that it kind of provides them a quick, broad, general picture of the efforts that can be done regarding physical activity.”

Complexity

“…while it provides a very broad overview, it doesn't actually provide you with how you can implement these type of strategies and how you can actually integrate it into your work.”

“Having a simplified [plan] where you can click on if you’re a worksite or if you’re a school or even another category, we use what we call, we do healthy in front of all of our website categories, healthy schools, healthy childcare, and then we do healthy you, so there’s also a piece that would even wrap it in the [physical activity] guidelines. But I think we need to keep the language as simplified as possible because I think we’ve just gone all over the map.”

Compatible or consistent

“We can move forward with what we did and still be in line with the National Plan.”

Not compatible or consistent

“There seems to be a disconnect with maybe some of the federal policy recommendations and the Physical Activity Plan…. I think that the other federal organizations could do a better job of supporting that at the national level.”

 

“Most of the objectives of the National Plan actually almost mirrored or complemented our state plan.”