Events and speaking

Introduction

Culturally and regionally relevant physical activities (CRRPAs), such as ethnic dance and heritage sports and games, have strong value for health promotion. However, evidence on CRRPA is dispersed across multiple scientific disciplines including anthropology, Indigenous studies, behavioral medicine, gerontology, and public health. Furthermore, culturally specific terminology complicates identification of relevant literature through conventional search strategies, which are typically oriented toward Western biomedical frameworks. Aims are to develop and implement a comprehensive, tiered, expert- and AI-informed search strategy to synthesize evidence on CRRPA for global health promotion.

Methods

A scoping review framework is being employed to guide evidence synthesis. The search strategy is being designed in collaboration with global and public health experts and library scientists with cultural and regional expertise. We are utilizing a tiered approach across two broad strategies: (i) generic terms relevant to CRRPA (e.g., physical activity, exercise) and (ii) specific activity-based search terms (e.g., hula, Tai Chi). Within the second strategy, multiple tiers are applied: Teir 1 incorporates broad terms related to different categories of activities including ethnic dance, martial arts, food acquisition, sports and games, and others. Tier 2 includes terms derived from preliminary review and study team expertise. Tier 3 draws from established resources (e.g. lists from UNESCO and Traditional Sports Organization). Tier 4 employs AI-generated search terms from SCOPUS AI and ChatGPT. Tier 5 integrates terms from reference librarians with regional and cultural expertise.

Multiple databases will be searched to capture multidisciplinary evidence, including PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science, EBSCOhost, PsycInfo, AnthroSource, SocIndex, ATLA Religion Database, Sports Medicine & Education Index, and SportDISCUS. Search terms are adapted using both Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and keywords. Grey literature sources will also be explored to capture community-based and non-indexed publications.

Results and Discussion

Preliminary review has identified literature on a wide variety of CRRPAs across multiple disciplines. Practices such as yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong have been well documented for their health benefits, particularly for mental wellbeing and chronic disease management. In contrast, other activities remain underrepresented or absent from indexed databases. Additionally, we expect that the research will be disproportionately skewed toward the Global North, with limited representation from Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia.

The iterative refinement of search terms, guided by expert input and AI tools, is expected to enhance identification of culturally specific terminology not captured by standard indexing systems.

Conclusions

The development of this tiered, interdisciplinary search strategy offers a novel, inclusive approach to synthesizing evidence on CRRPA. By integrating cultural expertise, AI-assisted search term generation, and a structured methodology, this approach addresses linguistic challenges and disciplinary fragmentation in the literature. Anticipated outcomes include identifying both well-studied and overlooked CRRPAs, highlighting gaps in the research, including underrepresented populations (e.g., refugees) and geographical disparities. This strategy also recognizes the importance of decolonial and postcolonial perspectives in categorizing and analyzing CRRPA across regions. Ultimately, this work aims to inform equitable, culturally relevant health promotion strategies worldwide. Furthermore, this approach may serve as a model for evidence synthesis in other complex public health domains.

Keywords

Physical activity; health promotion; culture; AI; review methodology

Introduction

A broad, interdisciplinary, international body of evidence indicates that heritage physical activities have strong value for health outcomes across multiple dimensions. Heritage physical activities are defined in this context as those with regional, cultural, and/or traditional relevance and may include dances, sports and games, martial arts, and other movement practices. Some of these activities are well integrated in traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine globally (e.g., yoga, tai chi, qi gong). Many others (e.g., ethnic dances) are well known in communities to be of deep value for the health and wellbeing of self, family, community, spirit, and land, but are often not well integrated into health efforts. Synthesizing literature relevant to heritage physical activity can help to guide future work in this area from a global health promotion perspective, including integration into clinical practices and lifestyle medicine goals. The Public Health Resonance Project is a global effort to synthesize this evidence base to produce actionable evidence that can be used by individuals, advocates, systems, and communities to improve health outcomes and health equity locally and globally.

Methods

This presentation will describe the Public Health Resonance Project’s current protocol and plans for the synthesis from the global evidence base that will (i) describe the extent and nature of the literature supporting these practices, (ii) assess evidence gaps, (iii) apply a typology by population, location, and other variables, (iv) produce practical meta-data to be used to create an applied, accessible database.

Results and Discussion

The evidence synthesis is currently in the protocol feedback stage. In this phase, numerous scholarly traditions and search terms have been identified and refined following input from the study team, a global team of experts, and library science expertise. Input is now being gathered from practitioners, scholars, clinicians, and other communities who would use this evidence synthesis. Following standardized protocols, presentation attendees will be invited to give input on (a) search terms and (b) relevant scholarly traditions. In the next phase, PubMed, EBSCOhost, Web of Science, PsycInfo, AnthroSource, SocIndex, ATLA Religion Database, Sports Medicine & Education Index, and SPORTDiscus will be searched for peer-reviewed, published literature related to one or more heritage physical activities. Using Covidence to manage the review, article titles and abstracts will be screened to determine relevance. Full-text screening and data extraction will then be completed including plans to enable continuous monitoring of intercoder reliability. An extraction template and guide have been developed and piloted to support this large-scale data integration. These have included iterative updates and refinements based on feedback from the research team and expert steering committee. Primary products of this work will include meta-data to support the planned global Heritage Physical Activity Database as well as a peer-reviewed journal articles following PRISMA for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines.

Conclusions

Heritage physical activity is a promising area for health promotion and health system inclusion. Supporting activities of known importance and value in communities can improve individual health, reduce health risk, and increase collective well-being across many dimensions. Integrating the large, diffuse global evidence on this multidisciplinary topic will support this.

Keywords

Physical activity; traditional; culture; global

Culturally and regionally relevant physical activity (CRRPA), including ethnic dance and traditional sports, has a strong and growing evidence base around the value to health across multiple dimensions, including chronic disease prevention, social connectedness, mental health, and healthy aging. CRRPA interventions are particularly meaningful to communities away from their homelands, providing evidence-based opportunities to build new connections, retain deep ties to places of origin, and increase physical activity in populations who often have lower participation rates. This workshop shares existing knowledge and innovative new evidence on CRRPA for global public health promotion then supports participants’ application in their communities. This workshop has five parts. First, we share highlights from an ongoing evidence synthesis on CRRPA by a multinational group of experts, showcasing in particular the evidence regarding migrant and immigrant communities. This includes a conceptual model (with dimensions of location and culture) providing a framework to illuminate important invention components and to support hypothesis-driven research and practice. Second, the application of this topic will be considered with a focus on the Armenian context/diaspora using the conceptual model. Third, this topic will be considered on immigration within and from Albania using the conceptual model. Fourth, using the conceptual model, participants will brainstorm and apply these ideas to their contexts and communities. Fifth: A moderated discussion will synthesize participant insights, questions, and applications to support public health promotion with CRRPA in research, policy, and practice. This workshop will share knowledge and evidence supporting CRRPA across multiple health dimensions guided by conceptual models and with practical examples from two distinct contexts. Participants will apply these ideas to their communities in concordance with the World Health Organization emphasis on the importance of cultural and regional insights for health.