Walkers of all ages are invited to help Bermuda make a dent in the 1 Billion Steps Challenge.

The Department of Health has joined the initiative, which is being organised by the American Public Health Association as part of its mission to encourage the community to exercise more.

“It is about encouraging people to be more physically active every day,” Virloy Lewin, health promotion co-ordinator with the Department of Health, told The Royal Gazette.

“The Department of Health is taking part because we want to encourage the community to become more physically active.

“Consistent physical activity like walking helps prevent chronic disease and improve quality of life, mental health and healthy ageing.”

Dr Lewin added that one of the objectives under the heathy weight goal of the Well Bermuda strategy is to increase the physical activity of adults and children. “The 1 Billion Steps Challenge is an opportunity to do so,” she said. “The challenge is for all abilities. Anyone can participate.”

The challenge started on January 9 and it will end on April 9, coinciding with the end of Public Health Week 2017.

So far, the Move More Bermuda team, consisting of 72 members, have contributed 10,355,746 steps, placing it 123rd out of 465 teams.

Dr Lewin said: “Each week I set a weekly challenge to give participants a goal to strive for the week. This week’s challenge is to walk the Pacific Crest, a 30-mile walk.

“Participants are challenged to do the 30 miles in seven days.”

According to Dr Lewin, all the teams taking part in the challenge had walked a total of 200 million steps by January 27.

In its invitation to participants, the Department of Health added: “We know 1 billion sounds like a lot, but if we all come together and do our small part, we can easily reach one billion steps and beyond. Take family walks, schedule walking meetings at the office, walk your children to school. The more who join, the quicker we’ll reach one billion steps.

“Plus, we’ll be encouraging healthy habits among our family, friends and co-workers.”

Steps can be logged using a fitness tracker or manually. People can sign up by visiting https://stridekick.com/tc/apha and create an account.

After creating an account and syncing their device, they can go back to the homepage, search for Move More Bermuda and select “Join team”.

Alternatively, the can visit www.nphw.org/get-involved/steps-challenge/manually-enter-steps to find out how to enter steps manually.