Today hearing about Dpcm makes you tremble, thinking about what happened in our lives with the pandemic, and what is still happening on the social level. But that wasn’t always the case. It was 2007 when the Dpcm “Gaining Health” came out: a measure desired by the Government to promote and stimulate good health practices in the Italian population.
So, the doctor Erminia Battista, a public health doctor serving in the Prevention Department of USL Umbria 1 (in business until recently) with the task of promoting healthy lifestyles, had an idea that turned out to be very fortunate.
“My task was to identify strategies to promote physical activity in the population. Personally, I came out of a car accident that had blocked me for some time, they told me that I would no longer be able to walk … And instead through Nordic walking I slowly got back on the move and I walked the my reason for living. So, stimulated by this personal experience of rebirth, I chose to promote walking because it allowed me to reach all social groups and all ages, always paying attention to the most disadvantaged groups. The path made it possible to reach everyone. Driven by the worrying data of obesity in the child population, I started in 2009 with the children to promote the school Piedibus, a path from home to school led by carers: the first experience started from Deruta ”.
What were the difficulties you encountered in promoting the Piedibus?
“The children were willing to walk, but there was a lack of carers, adults willing to engage in the service. And I realized then that I had to work on the community as a whole. So I started to propose the Piedibus to adults, trying to make the path seductive, let’s say more tempting than the sofa … People had to find a reason to leave the house and come for a walk: so I thought of combining culture: moments of reading in the breaks of the walk, but above all visits to those sites that are normally closed or frequented only by tourists; stages among the many fascinating glimpses of our territory that are not normally beaten by the crowd. To meet the needs of the various age groups, over time, in addition to the school lines, the evening and afternoon lines and many special editions of the Piedibus of Well Being. To this then, the sense of care with the Community gardening: we began to frequent parks or degraded corners of the territory, for which we started small maintenance and recovery activities, making them shine again for the benefit of the community and helping citizens to rediscover the love for those most hidden and abandoned parts of the city”.
What emerged from this experience, which gradually began to involve hundreds of people?
“The Piedibus of Well Being is all-round health promotion, not just a physical activity: what I wanted to privilege was the aspect of socialization, recovering the relationship with oneself and others, an aspect that for me is predominant in itself. Because those who walk for physical activity can do it anyway. But my goal is to find real sedentaries, those who have more difficulty going out for many reasons … that’s why I called it Piedibus del Ben – Being, a 360 ° well-being that does not only concern physical health, but mental and physical health as well as spiritual and social health. What happened is that people came to walk with us because they felt welcomed into a group that became like a family. Over the years we have also collected moving testimonies from people who felt reborn from this simple but sincere company, sharing, activity. We have met many painful stories, abandoned people, even young people, with difficult lives. It was an interception of a latent need, which is not expressed by people. And I’m not just talking about the elderly, but of various ages: perhaps widowed or separated people, or people who have lost their jobs… The Piedibus responds to the need of individuals to feel integrated, satisfied ”.
With the pandemic, the Piedibus del Benessere has suffered a setback, but it does not mean that it has stopped:
“Before the pandemic we had reached 25 evening lines active in the area, with 2000 admissions per week; we have lowered the index of sedentary lifestyle of the population in USL 1 to 18% of sedentary people, against 34% of the national average, also because we network with all the agencies, associations that promote walking and socializing; and it’s nice to work on the net… My idea is that of inclusiveness. Now the various lines are slowly starting up again. We plan to increase the afternoon lines which are in great demand by the elderly. We currently rely on Avis which, in addition to naturally sharing the promotion of health and sociality, gives us the opportunity to be covered from an insurance point of view for Walking Leaders, or volunteer companions, who have the merit of guaranteeing continuity of the initiative. The school lines, in some situations, are supported by the Municipal Administration, which provides chaperones through the Auser. All the information to join the Piedibus is available on the Facebook group Piedibus del Benessere “.
In short, the idea of the Piedibus for her was a real mission: not only to walk to feel good with the body, but also to feel good with the soul (and how much we need it these days!).
“I call it an all-round beauty promotion operation. Of the great values of life, of sociability, of the environment and of respect for the weakest. Having a holistic, comprehensive vision of health allows people to grow, both humanly and culturally and in fact some people have grown up and become protagonists “.
Dr. Erminia Battista, with her Piedibus del Benessere, has seen “far” and this far-sightedness has received important national awards, including 1st National Award for Communication, New Media and Information for Health 2012; the Innova Salute 2017 Award from the PA Forum; the Culture, Sociality and Leisure Award, promoted by the Center for Culture and Society Studies of Turin – Piedmont Region 2018. The initiative has also been recognized as an innovative strategy for the Promotion of Health and has been included in the catalog of Community Building Good Practices, as part of the “Community building network for health protection” project promoted by CERGAS – Bocconi University.