Alternative event ideas

If Workplace Walkathon is not right for your workplace, or you want to keep up the momentum after the Walkathon is over, there are many other ideas, including:

Hold talks on healthy eating and improving activity levels to reduce the risk of lifestyle related chronic disease, by local guest speakers such as a dietitian, personal trainer or GP.
Run a Healthy Cooking on a Budget competition, a Healthy BBQ cook-off or a Best Healthy Recipe competition. Look on the Measure Up website for our Community Healthy BBQ Challenge Event Toolkit.
Hold a healthy cooking demonstration given by a local chef, dietitian/nutritionist, or local celebrity.
Hold a walkathon and raise funds for charity.
Organise a healthy lunch day, where staff members bring in a healthy dish to share from home and have a healthy communal lunch.
Introduce small workplace challenges for points, like: Go for 2 and 5 day, no junk food day, healthy morning tea day, take the stairs day, add 30 minutes of activity (or more!) day, take 10,000 steps day, or do an extra 500 steps per day.

Simply alter the Workplace Walkathon toolkit to meet your needs.

You could link your event to a community health day or week, like those identified below:

Health months/weeks/days you can link your activities to:

February – World Cancer Day (4th)
March – World Kidney Day (13th)
April – World Health Day (7th), Arthritis Week (1st week)
May – National Heart Week (1st week), Kidney Awareness Week (last week)
June – Bowel Cancer Awareness Week (2nd week), International Men’s Health Week (2nd week)
July – National Diabetes Week (3rd week)
August – Breastfeeding Awareness Month, National Healthy Bones Week (1st week)
September – National Asthma Week (1st week), National Stroke Week (3rd week), World Heart Day (last Sunday of the month)
October – Walk to Work Day (first Friday of the month), World Food Day (16th), National Nutrition Week (3rd week), Ride to Work Day (Wednesday, 3rd week), World Osteoporosis Day (20th)
November – World Diabetes Day (14th)

You should also consider, implementing ongoing activities for your workplace to promote healthy eating and physical activity:

Organise for some permanent changes to be made to your in-house café/canteen’s menu – some fresh salads, salad wraps, low fat yogurts, fresh fruit salad cups etc to be available EVERY day.
Pricing and promotions for healthier choices at workplace canteens and food outlets.
Introduce a weekly staff physical activity event for all staff to attend at the most suitable time eg. a before work walk from the office, a Friday lunch time yoga class, or an after work Monday touch football game.
Promote the Heart Foundation's walking groups in your local area.