Co-design the key to community programs

Federation researchers have partnered with the local government of one of Victoria's largest and fastest-growing municipalities on a project that will deliver physical activity initiatives for females in the community by working with them to help co-design the programs.

The project began about a year ago after the City of Casey approached Federation about partnership and research opportunities, including in the areas of sport and physical activity.

The council wanted to know more about the barriers faced by women and girls in accessing sport and recreation activities – particularly those with lower levels of physical activity – and to empower the community to become more physically active.

Senior Lecturer of Sport Management in the Institute of Health and Wellbeing Dr Meghan Casey, who is the lead researcher on the project, says the project was designed with two phases – the first invited women from Casey to four workshops to co-design physical activity opportunities for their community. After the rollout of the programs, researchers will evaluate their effectiveness in getting more participants involved.

This project brought together research expertise from the Collaborative Evaluation Research Centre (CERC) and Physical Activity and Sport Insights (PASI).

“We ran four workshops and were aiming to reach about 40 women across the workshops but we doubled that, and the women really were excited by the opportunity to have a say in the future design of physical activity programs for them in the City of Casey,” she said.

“We ran those workshops to unpack the barriers women were experiencing and we asked them how they would design a program for themselves and the other women who were like them.”

The recommendations from those workshops were then taken to the council which is making changes to its programs and is also advocating for changes among its physical activity providers’ programs.

Participants completed surveys after attending the workshops which revealed their physical activity behaviours and the researchers will assess these later this year after the council has had the opportunity to revamp some of the programs.

Dr Casey says this will help determine whether co-designing the programs had made a difference. She said the council had a strong track record in improving the physical activity of women with their #CaseyGirlsCan initiative and were keen to expand on that.

She says this innovative and engaging research design could be replicated to address barriers and co-design programs for other population groups and other local government areas.

"By having the women involved in the process of designing how the programs will look, how they should run, how much they should cost and these aspects, this will show us if that makes a difference in changing their behaviour." Dr Meghan Casey

“It's well known that women generally have lower physical activity participation rates than men, but the City of Casey is also a growth area and has a culturally diverse population, and we know their participation rates are lower”.

“Many women have caring and family responsibilities, not just for children but often for older relatives, so finding ways to support them to be more active is really important. That has been identified as an important focus for the council.”

Dr Casey says the workshops revealed that many of the women were not aware of current physical activity programs already offered to women by the council.

“The information generated from the workshops has helped the City of Casey identify areas for improvement and will help build capacity across the organisation the community organisations they work with, like physical activity providers. Council can work collaboratively with those local providers to meet the needs of these women, so there will be better outcomes for the women because they've taken part in designing the physical activity programs.

“There's certainly some new programming that has already been identified as a real need, including women from culturally diverse backgrounds wanting learn to swim programs to feel confident and safe in the water.

“Addressing barriers and making learn to swim programs more accessible and affordable for these women, then means they can then go and use their local aquatic centre when it suits them.”

City of Casey Acting Director Community Life, Angie Peresso says the council is proud to have partnered with Federation University on this research project.

“Through the project we’ve been able to gain a better understanding of the physical activity needs of women and girls of Casey and the barriers they face when trying to exercise and connect to their local communities through recreation,” she said.

“Based upon the findings, council will develop and implement recreation programming opportunities that will address current barriers to enable more women and girls of Casey to be active more often and to improve their physical health and mental wellbeing.”