Media Clipping — November 2004, Business Voice, Halifax Chamber of Commerce

Physical activity linked to health – and the economy

By Clare O'Connor

PHYSICAL INACTIVITY HAS A HUGE IMPACT on our health, health-care system and economy. Getting off the couch, however, is more than a matter of encouraging movement. It's also a matter of having the space and option to move about freely and safely.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Nova Scotia knows that reducing the burden of chronic disease requires a broad understanding of health and its determinants. Regional planning is a valuable tool to foster healthy communities. The 25-year regional planning process currently under way in HRM presents an opportunity to ensure that encouraging activity is a significant part of HRM's future.

The Foundation was delighted to contribute to the HRM planning process by providing a broad-brush understanding of the link between physical health, physical space and the economy. To do this, it commissioned a report by GPI Atlantic, The Cost of Physical Inactivity in Halifax Regional Municipality. It assesses physical inactivity in HRM and its cost-related impacts, also looking at planning-related policies that ensure accessible avenues for active living and enhancing the bottom line.

The evidence is clear that increased physical activity would save the province millions of dollars a year in avoided health care costs. It's estimated that physical inactivity in HRM costs the provincial health care system $16 million a year in hospital, physician and drug costs alone. When adding all direct health care costs, including private expenditures, the sedentary lifestyle of nearly half of HRM residents costs the province $23.6 million a year in direct medical expenditures.

This spending is currently added to the provincial GDP and economic growth statistics, and is thus taken as a sign of prosperity and progress. The Genuine Progress Index counts this spending due to physical inactivity as a cost not a gain. Physical inactivity in HRM costs the provincial economy an additional $ 44.7 million each year in indirect productivity losses due to premature death and disability. Adding direct and indirect costs, the total economic burden of physical inactivity in HRM is estimated at over $68 million annually. This amounts to $180 per person.

Two hundred HRM residents die prematurely each year due to physical inactivity, accounting for 7 per cent of all premature deaths in the municipality. These premature deaths result in the loss of 850 potential years of life every year in HRM before age 70. In other words, if all HRM residents were physically active, the municipality would gain 850 productive years of life each year, with corresponding gains to the economy.

An increase in the rate of physical activity could save the province millions of dollars. If just 10 per cent fewer residents of HRM over the age of 12 were physically inactive, the rate of physical inactivity would be 43.2 per cent. With this lower rate of physical inactivity, the province could save an estimated $1 million every year in avoided hospital, drug, and physician costs, and $1.65 million in total health care spending. Added to an estimated $3.1 million in productivity gains, total economic savings from a 10 percent reduction in physical inactivity amount to $4.75 million.

Evidence indicates that in HRM, 30 per cent of heart disease, 22 per cent of osteoporosis, 16 per cent of stroke, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and colon cancer, and nine per cent of breast cancer are attributable to physical inactivity.

Studies show that regular exercisers have much less overall lifetime morbidity than those who are sedentary, indicating that avoided medical costs due to physical activity aren't simply deferred to older ages. Urban planning offers excellent opportunities to increase chances for physical activity of residents by making walking or cycling viable alternatives to motorized transportation and by providing access to sports and recreation facilities.

According to the Canadian Community Health Survey, 48 per cent of HRM residents, 50 per cent of Nova Scotians, and 47 per cent of Canadians were physically inactive in 2003. HRM has the lowest rate of inactivity for any of the Nova Scotia statistical health regions, two of which have rates of inactivity of 54 per cent (the South-Southwestern Nova Scotia region and the Pictou-Guysborough-Antigonish-Strait region).

Given the enormous health-care burden of a sedentary lifestyle, a regional plan in HRM that provides for safe and walkable communities, sidewalks and biking paths, as well as access to quality sport and recreation programs and facilities, has the potential to reduce the enormous human and economic burden of physical inactivity, to improve the health of HRM residents and to bolster the economy locally and provincially.

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