The Healthcare Sector is working to increase physical activity among the Kansas City population.

The Healthcare Sector has a unique opportunity to reach many patients and families throughout the Kansas City region to promote physical activity and healthy lifestyle choices through in-person and TeleHealth visits with healthcare professionals.

The Healthcare Sector is led by Dr. Jodi Dickmeyer and Dr. Jay Roberson at Children’s Mercy Kansas City.

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KCPA Plan Strategies and Tactics for Healthcare

Successful implementation of the Healthcare Sector plan will require healthcare systems, practicing healthcare providers, and learners to recognize, embrace, and adopt physical activity promotion as a key strategy to improve population health and reduce the overall financial burden of healthcare for all.

Next Steps

Since finalizing the strategies and tactics for the sector, this group has continued to meet bi-monthly. Three Implementation groups were established to move the strategies into action. The Implementation groups are:

  • Just Walk

    • This group aligns with Strategy 20, tactic three. The Just Walk program, which sits within Walk with a Doc (WWAD), offers free community walks led by a healthcare professional. The group meets monthly to plan and coordinate walks with other walking groups in the Kansas City area. To learn more, visit our WWAD webpage: https://walkwithadoc.org/join-a-walk/locations/kansas-city-missouri-cmh/

  • Curriculum

    • This group aligns with strategy 22, all tactics. The group is focused on bringing lifestyle medicine curriculum to local medical and health professional schools. The group meets monthly to find ways to align curriculum efforts, coordinate with medical and health professional schools, and to identify pilot projects.

  • Billing and Reimbursement

    • This group aligns with strategy 21, tactic one. The group is looking at how to use existing codes related to physical activity, better understand the mechanisms for reimbursement used for billing related to Remote Patient Monitoring, and identify ways to include questions related to physical activity and screen time in well visits.

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Strategy 19

Healthcare systems should partner with other sectors to promote access to evidence-based physical activity-related services and to reduce health disparities.

Tactics

  1. Develop partnerships with community organizations to promote safe and equitable access to opportunities to walk, bicycle, swim, and play outdoors and access to active transportation to expand opportunities for recreational activity.

  2. Partner with other sectors and providers of community physical activity services to form referral networks that increase opportunities for physical activity and ensure equal access of their patients to community resources.

  3. Reduce financial barriers to use of community physical activity services by including reimbursement and/or sponsorship to community providers as part of healthcare benefit packages, including funding of programs likely to reach diverse populations in the community and subgroups with lowest levels of physical activity.

  4. Support the capacity of school-based health clinics and programs to promote physical activity.

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Strategy 20

Healthcare systems should increase the priority of physical activity assessment, advice, and promotion.

Tactics

  1. Make it a normal practice to assess and discuss physical activity at every routine patient encounter and document it in the patient’s chart.

  2. Integrate a physical activity plan into every routine patient encounter and document it in the patient's chart.

  3. Encourage healthcare professionals to be role models for active lifestyles for patients through initiatives such as Walk with a Doc (Just Walk), Girls on the Run, Walking School Bus, or other physical activity programs.

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Strategy 21

Healthcare providers and professional societies should recognize that physical inactivity and insufficient physical activity are treatable and preventable conditions with profound health and cost implications.

Tactics

  1. Expand the evidence on the cost-effectiveness of promoting physical activity in inactive patients with and without chronic disease, including evidence on the effect of therapeutic physical activity for existing conditions on patient outcomes and costs of care.

  2. Embed physical activity promotion in clinical guidelines where sufficient evidence exists for both positive health and cost outcomes.

  3. Ensure that priority is given to treatment of physical inactivity in population groups with the lowest levels of physical activity.

Strategy 22

Universities, post-graduate training programs, and professional societies should include basic physical activity education in the training of all healthcare professionals.

Tactics

  1. Include basic physical activity education during assessment, brief counseling, and referrals as part of the required curriculum in medical school.

  2. Foster health professional student interest in physical activity.

  3. Provide an array of evidence-based curricular resources to support physical activity education throughout all health professional training

  4. Include physical activity content in continuing education professional development for all health professionals.