Advancing research and practice for active living equity

Active living equity is a growing focus within public health, given substantial evidence linking regular physical activity to improved sleep, reduced psychosocial symptoms, and lowered risks of depression and anxiety. Despite well-established health benefits, the opportunity to lead healthy and active lifestyles remains unevenly distributed, reflecting persistent disparities rooted in policy, systems, and environmental barriers. Recent research underscores the necessity for coordinated, cross-disciplinary strategies to address these inequalities and calls attention to effective, tailored approaches for marginalized communities. However, evidence to guide action for people with disabilities, those of low socioeconomic status, and diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds remains limited, highlighting an urgent need for inclusive frameworks that drive lasting change.This Research Topic aims to catalyze multi-disciplinary inquiry and innovation by: (1) Applying methodological approaches to unravel context–dose–response relationships between exercise, movement behaviors, fitness, and mental health or psychosocial outcomes, while examining variations in benefit; (2) Standardizing surveillance systems that account for movement behaviors and fitness measures to support international comparability; (3) Investigating a broad set of determinants—behavioral, social, environmental, and policy—through a lens of individual variation and intersectionality across the life course; and (4) Strengthening equity-focused monitoring and evaluation, particularly among underserved groups such as people with disabilities, those experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage, rural and remote communities, and migrants.The scope of this Research Topic centers on the interplay between movement behaviors, fitness, and mental health across diverse populations, emphasizing multilevel determinants and pathways to reduce inequities. We encourage contributions that focus on, but are not limited to, the following themes:o Multi-disciplinary methodological approaches for optimizing context–dose relationships in active livingo Strategies for integrating movement behaviors and fitness in population-level surveillanceo Examination of behavioral, social, environmental, and policy determinants, considering intersections of individual differenceso Equity-focused monitoring and evaluation in special or underserved populations (including disability, low socioeconomic status, rural/remote communities, and migrants)o Frameworks for implementing and sustaining active living interventions across settingsArticle types may include original research (observational, longitudinal cohort studies, intervention trials, quasi-experimental designs), methodological and measurement studies, surveillance reports, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, study protocols, and implementation or process evaluations. Topic editors: Danqing Zhang, Shuge Zhang (CPsychol), Clemens Drenowatz Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78057/advancing-research-and-practice-for-active-living-equity