University of Hong Kong fitness month aimed at showing exercise is medicine

“If exercise could be packed into a pill, it would be the single most widely prescribed and beneficial medicine in the nation,” said the late Dr. Robert Butler, former director of the US National Institute on Ageing.

Alas, we all know that getting a dose of exercise is not as simple as just swallowing a pill – but there are ways to incorporate physical activity more easily into our daily lives.

The University of Hong Kong’s recent Exercise is Medicine (EIM) Month is a great example. For almost every day in October, there was at least one free activity for the campus community to participate in, such as outdoor yoga, boot camp, skipping clinics, a lacrosse lesson and fitness assessments. About 1,700 people participated in nearly 30 different fitness events and seminars, according to Dr Michael Tse, chairman of the university’s EIM on Campus organising committee.

“I think it’s a really good future direction to expand this further in HKU and other universities in Hong Kong and all around the city, because I think that’s going to have an impact on long-term health care,” says Tse, assistant director of the university’s Centre for Sports and Exercise, which collaborates with the University Health Service to organise wellness activities on campus.

Tse and colleagues believe providing such opportunities for physical activity, creating a culture on campus that embraces movement as a daily facet of life, and providing the behavioural tools necessary to enact that change are key to helping students develop a lifelong affinity for physical activity, which is integral to disease prevention and treatment, and vital for meeting public health goals.