EU health co-design policies to counteract the COVID-19 pandemic effect promoting physical activity.

Abstract

Background: The research is placed in the context of interdisciplinary medical-legal studies on the importance of promoting physical activity as a public health tool.

Objective: The aim was to highlight the tools that can be used by EU members for planning interventions aimed at overcoming the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and for responding to a future crisis.

Methods: First, the medical resources relating to the indirect and direct effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are analysed. Then, the results are compared with the measures of the EU bodies to verify the correspondence of the scientific arrests, with the political-regulatory interventions.

Results: It was found that the prolonged closure of sports centres and the contagion from COVID-19 produce affects the body in a way that can only be recovered by motor activity. However, in the EU, there does not exist a regulatory harmonization about health issues that can directly impose the Members to implement their legislation to promote motor activity.

Conclusions: The signing of the Rome Declaration at the Global Health Summit on 21 May 2021 constitutes an important and concrete commitment for the exchange in the medical-scientific field, and for an effective co-design of intervention strategies for the relaunch of physical activity within projects such as EU4Health and the two-year HealthyLifestyle4All campaign.