Designing an intergenerational intervention to promote physical activity amongst older adults and young children

We report on a series of co-design workshops conducted with older adults where we explored motivations and barriers to physical exercise in the contexts of intergenerational family relationships,neighbourhoods and communities. Given the current state-of-the-art and the knowledge gathered from our workshops with older adults, we further developed a concept prototype called iStep (Intergenerational Support To Encourage Physical Activity). iStep aims to promote physical activity by allowing children and their grandparents to form teams of two and collaboratively work toward physical activity-related goals. We examine initial findings from this study and interactions between the research team and the participants, in order to assess the possibilities and limitations of iStep within existing school settings and family dynamics.