Get Active – Healthy Communities Challenge

Inactivity is major health risk factor impacting mental and physical well-being and incurring significant social and economic costs. Encouraging healthy lifestyles inclusive of physical activity, governments provide free facilities and maintain recreational spaces. Get Active is a 2018 GovHack award winner, proposing an app which connects a user with local recreation facilities and spaces.

Applying numerous open data sets, the project team identified the opportunity to improve knowledge of local recreational activity options, integrate their locations to provide navigation and package it in a user-friendly interface.

Get Active won the Queensland Government’s Healthy Communities Challenge.

The Data

The application used the following data:

• Park Facilities and Assets locations
• Queensland Sport, Exercise and Recreation Survey Adults 2015
• Queensland Sport, Exercise and Recreation Survey Adults 2016
• Park Facilities and Item counts
• Land for public recreation Queensland
• Parks Playing Surfaces
• Bikeway sections
• Active parks events
• Basketball Courts
• Parks List

The Benefits

Increasing the physical activity participation rate by connecting the public with local recreation will improve both individual health outcomes and those of the communities in which they live. More broadly, such an initiative has the potential to reduce upward pressure on public health care costs.