Bradford is one of 12 Local Delivery Pilots (LDPs) across the country, funded by the National Lottery through Sport England who are aiming to better understand what helps people to be active in their communities. Sport England are investing up to £8 million of Lottery Investment in the JU:MP programme over the next five years to evaluate the impact of taking a whole systems approach to physical activity. Born in Bradford, a research programme hosted by Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, are leading the pilot on behalf of Active Bradford.

From the very start, during the initial application to become a Sport England Local Delivery Pilot (LDP), four principles were identified to guide the programme

These are:

1. Tailored approaches to change at every level of a whole system and linking up 'The system'

2. Community involvement at every step of the process

3. Engaged, active leaders and partners

4. Evidence and insight led

By following these principles the JU:MP programme will be able to create transformational change. Underpinning these principles are the values; taking an asset-based, solution-focussed approach and working collaboratively with partners to create sustainable change.

Throughout the Accelerator Phase the JU:MP team will be developing new assets, resources and training packages which will allow the JU:MP Programme to be sustainable once support is withdrawn.

Research has shown that low levels of physical activity during childhood and adolescence can have a negative impact on children and young people's academic achievements, social abilities and life skills, as well as their health.

Born in Bradford data has shown that 77% of 5-11 year olds in Bradford don't do the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day and 38% leave primary school overweight or obese.

Being active doesn't only improve children's physical health, but also their emotional wellbeing, meaning that active children are more confident and happier.

It is our aspiration that JU:MP supports the children and young people in Our Place to grow-up to be healthy, confident, skilled young people who have achieved academically, to be employable and not engage in anti-social behaviour or crime, and be empowered and valued members of society in Bradford. We want children and young people to see opportunities for themselves in the district and to contribute to the workforce, economy and prosperity of the district.

Distinctive to Bradford is the Born in Bradford (BiB) Study, a world class birth cohort which provides epidemiological research following the lives of 13,500 children and their parents (30,000 participants in total) as they grow up in the district. Evidence from the BiB cohort, including accelerometry data collected from over 1400 children, has guided the development of the JU:MP implementation plan alongside international literature and consultation with over 1,000 children and families. The cohort study will also be used to evaluate the JU:MP programme and our research team will conduct neighbourhood and project level evaluations to capture more evidence on what works over the duration of the programme.

The JU:MP applied research programme is a world-leading study and we will share the results widely and use the findings to help inform future policy and practice at a local, national and global level.

The JU:MP programme's Theory of Change (ToC) was developed from initial research with our JU:MP communities, in addition to reviewing national and international research literature.

The ToC sets out the requirements that the JU:MP Programme needs to meet in order to change physical activity and thus wider outcomes for C&YP. We have been using our ToC as an important planning tool, to ensure that the workstreams and activities JU:MP invests in are aligned to the change that we want to see.

You can find out more about developing a theory of change in this video.

The JUMP programme is taking a system-based approach, at a local neighbourhood level with strong community engagement and co-production central in its design. A critical aspect of system-based approaches is not expecting interventions to create effective behaviour change working in isolation. There is no one single solution to create sustained behaviour change for children and young people at a population level. The places they live, the places they go, the way they travel, the people they see, the organisations they interact with, the things that are of interest to them, and the challenges they have to overcome will be different for different children and young people.

In the JUMP programme we want all children and young people to be supported though increasing their capabilities, opportunities and motivation, to be physically active, and through increasing families' capabilities, opportunities and motivation to support their children to be physically active. This means that policy and strategy, community engagement, and activities need to be implemented across different settings and sectors concurrently.

In November 2020, the International Society for Physical Activity and Health (ISPAH) published the document 'eight investments that work for physical activity' https://www.ispah.org/resources/key-resources/8-investments/.

The JU:MP programme covers all of the six investments that focus on young people: 1) JU:MP is a community-wide programme (working at a hyper-local neighbourhood level), 2) our social marketing is a mass media campaign including public education, 3) we have an Active Travel workstream, 4) all of our neighbourhoods are in urban areas and we are investing money in greenspace developments within these areas, 5) our Creating Active Schools (CAS) workstream is a whole-of-school programme, 6) we are providing sport and recreation for all via a varied programme of provision. ISPAH's two remaining investments which are adult-focused are not covered within the JU:MP Programme, these are healthcare and workplaces.

The programme map below shows how the 15 workstreams operate at various levels of the system and how they link together.

The JU:MP programme is taking a whole systems approach to increasing children's physical activity levels by working with families, communities, organisations (including schools, faith settings and the voluntary sector), improving the local environment and influencing city-wide policy and strategy. This approach has been tested working at a neighbourhood level in 3 pioneer neighbourhoods in the pathfinder phase (2019-2021), and our understanding of what has worked will now be explored further in the accelerator phase which is ongoing until 2024. In this next phase, the JU:MP programme will be implemented across the whole LDP, within 5 new neighbourhoods. The 15 workstreams shown in the programme map are presented in further detail below – these workstreams will be implemented in each of the 8 JU:MP neighbourhoods.