Barriers and Facilitators of Physical Activity Participation for Health Promotion in Underserved Communities

Abstract

Currently, China is promoting the equalization of public fitness services, requiring all institutions to build a higher-level and safer public fitness service system to ensure that all residents can equally enjoy the benefits of physical health. However, during the promotion process of public fitness, many obstacles have been encountered. For example, in underdeveloped areas, communities, old residential areas, and rural communities, there are generally problems of low participation rate of residents in physical activities and large differences in health levels. This has become a prominent shortcoming in the construction of Healthy China. This paper explores the obstacles to physical activity participation of residents in underdeveloped community areas, discusses different problems on the supply side and the demand side, builds an optimized service system, forms an effective guarantee mechanism, and combines practical cases from multiple regions across the country. It systematically analyzes the specific factors of current obstacles to physical activity participation in community areas, forms targeted optimization paths. The research suggests that the obstacles to physical activity participation in underdeveloped communities stem from dual restrictions on both the supply and demand sides. The supply side has structural problems such as resource allocation gaps, insufficient project adaptability, and low accessibility; the demand side has internal constraints such as weak health cognition, insufficient participation motivation, and low health literacy. Building an optimized public health and health guarantee system requires adhering to supply-side reform and demand-side empowerment, promoting the collaboration of multiple entities, constructing a precise and adaptable service structure, and improving the level of residents' physical activity participation. The research results can help improve the public fitness service system in underdeveloped community areas, narrow the health gap between different groups, and continuously promote the construction of Healthy China, providing certain references and inspirations for different types of regions.