Exeter Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx) Blog
Exeter Collaboration for Academic Primary Care (APEx) Blog
Posted by ma403
6 October 2026There’s nothing quite like a conference held at a Cypriot beachfront hotel to put a spring in a researcher’s step. Beyond the glass doors of the conference venue, palm trees framed a bright Mediterranean sea, and the September sun made the sandy shoreline particularly tempting. Inside, poster boards, coffee cups and lively conversations filled the rooms as researchers from across Europe gathered for the annual European Health Psychology Society Conference in Paphos. Among those poster boards was mine, sharing findings from our research team’s evaluation of the parkrun practice initiative.
Standing beside my red and white poster, I found myself explaining parkrun more than I might at a UK conference. For some European delegates, our familiar Saturday morning event needed an introduction. parkrun offers free, outdoor weekly events where people can walk, run, or volunteer around a 5-kilometre course. The parkrun practice initiative encourages GP practices to link with their local parkrun event and introduce patients and staff to these opportunities. With over 2000 UK GP practices signed up to the initiative, our research asks a simple question: what happens after a GP practice signs up?
As people stopped to look at the poster, conversations quickly moved beyond parkrun itself. From speaking to healthcare professionals and GP practice staff, we found that believing physical activity is a good thing is only part of the story. Staff also need the time, support and connections to make talking about opportunities like parkrun a realistic part of their working day. That led to some of the most interesting conversations in Cyprus. We often talk about helping patients change their behaviour, the onus being on them to become more active. But what about the people providing their care? Prescribing, signposting and talking about prevention are behaviour too, and they are shaped by the environments where GP practice staff work. That message seemed to travel well. Delegates at the conference might not have had a parkrun practice initiative in their own healthcare system, but they recognised the challenge of connecting busy primary care services with local opportunities that could support people’s health. It opened conversations about social prescribing, community-based prevention and what these approaches might look like in different European contexts.
Those conversations are also continuing beyond the conference. As part of our evaluation, we have co-produced the parkrun practice podcast, bringing together different voices on parkrun, primary care, and physical activity. For anyone interested in the people and experiences behind our research project, please check it out: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Al1yIMq1UHYlqx7o3c8M5 , or type in The parkrun Practice Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
By the end of the poster session, the Mediterranean sea was still sparkling outside and my poster had emulated its waves by bringing a stream of conversations, questions, and new connections. I left Cyprus thinking that the parkrun practice initiative is interesting not just because of parkrun, but because it provides a case study of a much bigger challenge, one shared across global healthcare systems: how do we turn our ambitions for prevention into something that actually works in everyday primary care? Back to the desk to discover more…
