Benefits of Physical Activity during Pregnancy and Postpartum: An Umbrella Review

Purpose This study aimed to summarize the evidence from the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Scientific Report, including new evidence from an updated search of the effects of physical activity on maternal health during pregnancy and postpartum. Methods An initial search was undertaken to identify systematic reviews and meta-analyses published between 2006 and 2016. An updated search then identified additional systematic reviews and meta-analyses published between January 2017 and February 2018. The searches were conducted in PubMed®, CINAHL, and Cochrane Library and supplemented through hand searches of reference lists of included articles and reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Results The original and updated searches yielded a total of 76 systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Strong evidence demonstrated that moderate-intensity physical activity reduced the risk of excessive gestational weight gain, gestational diabetes, and symptoms of postpartum depression. Limited evidence suggested an inverse relationship between physical activity and risk of preeclampsia, gestational hypertension, and antenatal anxiety and depressive symptomology. Insufficient evidence was available to determine the effect of physical activity on postpartum weight loss, postpartum anxiety, and affect during both pregnancy and postpartum. For all health outcomes, there was insufficient evidence to determine whether the relationships varied by age, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or prepregnancy weight status. Conclusions The gestational period is an opportunity to promote positive health behaviors that can have both short- and long-term benefits for the mother. Given the low prevalence of physical activity in young women in general, and the high prevalence of obesity and cardiometabolic diseases among the U.S. population, the public health importance of increasing physical activity in women of childbearing age before, during, and after pregnancy is substantial

Leadership teams rediscover market analysis in seeking competitive advantage and growth during economic uncertainty

Many of marketing’s long-standing frameworks are finding an uprated role in the current economic turmoil. As companies’ leadership teams strive to understand changing market dynamics, recognise that revenue streams are threatened, seek to provide customers with new propositions relevant to their evolving values, and combat embattled rivals, core marketing analyses and strategic marketing tools are coming to the fore. In many organisations, it is the non-marketers amongst the leadership team that are turning to these marketing frameworks and incorporating market-led risk assessment of revenue streams to shape new business strategies. While this strategizing does not necessarily involve marketers at this most senior level of decision-making, it has put marketing’s analytical and strategic components at the forefront of corporate decision-making. This paper explains how, providing an insight into the strategizing process emerging for undertaking such market-led risk assessment, opportunity identification, creation of bases for competing, strategic trade-offs and programme planning