Walking challenge under '10,000 Steps a Day' campaign to be enrolled in October

To promote the health benefits of walking, the Department of Health (DH) will co-organize with the Occupational Safety and Health Council a Walking Challenge under the "10 000 Steps a Day" Campaign, with the aim of encouraging members of the public to increase their physical activities to combat non-communicable diseases (NCD).

With the slogan of "10 000 Steps for Health", the DH said today (September 21) that the Walking Challenge aims to promote walking through workplace organizations targeting adults. Enrolment will start on October 5 for the challenge period in November. The public can join the challenge as workplace organizations (including self-employed persons) or individuals.

Amid the COVID-19 epidemic, the DH is committed to combating NCD through, among others, reducing the prevalence of insufficient physical activities in the local population, which is one of the nine local targets to be achieved by 2025 as set out in the Towards 2025: Strategy and Action Plan to Prevent and Control Non-communicable Diseases in Hong Kong launched by the Government in 2018.

A spokesman for the DH said, "Walking is a simple form of physical activity that most of us are doing every day, and it brings us plenty of health benefits such as improving cardiopulmonary function, strengthening muscles and bones as well as reducing anxiety, depression and the risk of chronic diseases.

"Adults are recommended to gradually increase their daily step goal to 10 000 based on an individual's own physical conditions, abilities, pace and circumstances. Any amount of walking is better than none, even if the goal cannot be reached yet," the spokesman added.

Details of the Walking Challenge are as follows:

Target participants: adults aged 18 or above

Enrolment period: October 5 to 31

Challenge period: step counts from November 1 to 30

Interested workplace organizations and individuals can enroll through the event's official website commencing on October 5. To take part in the event, participants should use a mobile application to record their steps accumulated during the challenge period and synchronize the step count data with the designated online platform of the event. Top performing organizations and individuals who achieve an average of 8 000 steps per day (i.e. 80 percent of the daily step goal of 10 000) will be awarded. The enrolment quota is limited and is on a first-come, first-served basis.