Make Movement Your Mission COVID-19 success story

Professor Dawn Skelton is celebrating the success of the Make Movement Your Mission initiative, launched on the first day of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on 23 March 2020 to support older people to stay active during their shielding and social restrictions.

The GCU Professor in Ageing and Health, is also Director of not-for-profit training company, Later Life Training, and wanted to support their trained instructors by coming up with something to involve their clients and patients when face-to-face classes stopped.

Two years later it is still providing three online daily movement classes or ‘snacks’ to prompt thousands of older adults to sit less and move more.

Make Movement your Mission is accessed through Facebook and You Tube where instructors deliver daily movement ‘snacks’ lasting 10-15 minutes to an online audience. Hundreds ‘catch-up’ rather than watch live now that many of their usual activities have resumed.

The movement snacks idea was built around research into the importance of reducing sedentary behaviour to physical function - a key area of interest for the Ageing Well Research Group in the Research Centre for Health (ReaCH).

An evaluation of the online digital health initiative shows it helped older people become even more active than before the pandemic and it has received huge praise from participants who said it “contributed to the maintenance of the physical and mental health of so many”.

Feedback from participants was very positive. One said: “MMYM has been a life saver during COVID and now is in my regular daily routine just like brushing my teeth. Thank you all”.

Another commented: “Out of the misery of the pandemic you have created such a positive, life-affirming programme. You have contributed to the maintenance of the physical and mental health of so many. Long may you continue!”

And another said: “I’m very grateful to you and the team for helping me stand up straight for the first time in 50 years.”

The research paper, entitled ‘Make Movement Your Mission: Evaluation of an online digital health initiative to increase physical activity in older people during the COVID-19 pandemic’, has been published in the SAGE Journal, Digital Health.

The research was funded by a ‘Seedcorn’ grant from the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing and the Centre for Ageing Better, and a National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator Award.

Professor Skelton launched the initiative over fears that older people would decondition and lose stamina, strength and balance if they could not attend their normal clubs and events during COVID-19.

She said: “Most surveys and research published since the start of the pandemic have shown that older people have reduced activity and felt that they have declined in terms of physical and mental health as a result of the lockdown and consequent social distancing measures.

“Many could not attend activities, clubs or volunteering opportunities they previously took part in.”

Working with Public Health England, Professor Skelton showed that this reduction in activity would lead to an additional 100,000 people who would fall as a result of these social restrictions. Details are in this report COVID-19: wider impacts on people aged 65 and over.

Professor Skelton added: “But those that engaged with Make Movement Your Mission had the exact opposite trend. They became more active than before the pandemic, had improvements in both physical function and mental health.

“They felt supported by online instructors and other 'movement snackers', and part of a cohesive group of people that were 'in it together', even though they had never met!”