The 10,000 Steps program is a highly recognised, evidence-based, multi-strategy initiative that aims to raise awareness and has proven to increase participation in physical activity by encouraging the accumulation of physical activity as part of everyday living.
For more than 20 years, the program has supported individuals, workplaces and communities' health and wellbeing by increasing physical activity levels through encouraging the use of steps counters (pedometers) or activity trackers, as well as the delivery of information and resources via interactive 10,000 Steps web and mobile applications, with support from the project office.
The program's interactive platforms are designed using evidence-based behaviour change techniques to support individuals to monitor and track their physical activity. The program's implementation strategies align with the Social Ecological Model supporting physical activity at the individual, social, organisation, community and policy level.
10,000 Steps is a free physical activity program delivered by CQUniversity and proudly funded by the Queensland Government through Health and Wellbeing Queensland and Preventive Health SA, Government of SA.
The following summarise some main achievements of the program (as at May 2024).
Individuals
Empowering individuals to become and stay physically active.
- > 650,000 members registered
- Gender: Male 31% | Female 69%
- Location: Major city 57% | Regional 40% | Remote 3%
- Average age: 41 years
Workplaces
Providing resources and support to workplaces to promote physical activity and to create environments that foster healthy workers and healthy places.
- Of the 18,000 organisations who have signed up, 80% use the program to promote physical activity to their staff. The types of organisations include all sizes of workplace small (20%), medium (45%) and large (35%), all 20 industry categories and those in Queensland are spread geographically across the State in major cities (57%), regional (39%) and remote/very remote areas (4%).
Communities
Encouraging healthy communities through promotion of our program and highlighting the need for creating environments that are conducive to walking.
- 20% of organisations signing up aim to promote the program to a community audience including schools, councils and clients.
Website and Mobile Applications
Delivering an interactive and free physical activity web and mobile application.
- More than 299 billion steps have been logged on the 10,000 Steps applications.
- Users can now have their activity trackers sync steps into the 10,000 Steps program from Garmin, Fitbit, Google Fit and for iOS mobile users via the Apple Health app.
- 2020-2021: 823,897 unique users visit the 10,000 Steps website, recording over 2.9 million sessions and 17.9 million page views, with users spending on average 4 minutes per session.
- Since the release of the new 10,000 Steps apps on Apple Store and Google Play in November 2017, a total of 104,891 new apps have been downloaded.
Tournaments
Facilitating and supporting workplaces and community groups in the delivery of team-based step Tournaments and larger-scale health lifestyle challenges.
- More than 9,900 new Tournaments have been started by Organisations included a total of more than 58,000 teams made up of 373,000 individuals who collectively have logged more than 144 billion steps during their Tournaments.
- The 10,000 Steps Tournaments are effective in increasing participants’ physical activity levels at 6 weeks (80% meet national physical activity guideline) and 18 weeks (73% meet the guideline), with participants reporting they enjoyed taking part (90%), and that they would recommend 10,000 Steps to others (90%); and organisations reporting that 10,000 Steps resources are effective at promoting (95%) and increasing physical activity (93%), as well as affordable (75%) and not time-intensive (91%) to implement.
Promotion and Collaboration
10,000 Steps is more than a program delivering behaviour change, it is a whole of community movement that aligns with many Queensland Government priorities, that promotes physical activity and improves the health of Queenslanders.
- 10,000 Steps has a strong social media footprint with 5742 Facebook, 785 Twitter and 884 Instagram followers.
- Now funded by two agencies Health and Wellbeing Queensland and Preventive Health SA to increase physical activity levels across two Australian States.
- Involvement in the development of the new Queensland Walking Strategy and the Activate! Queensland 10-year Sport and Rec Plan, as well as being highlighted as a case study by Heart Foundation’s Healthy Active By Design and included as a program recommended in the Workplace Health and Safety's Queensland's Work health and wellbeing toolkit.