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INTRODUCTION: Physical activity messaging is an important step in the pathway towards improving population physical activity levels, but best practice is not yet understood. A gap in the literature exists for a physical activity messaging framework to help guide creation and evaluation of messages. This study aimed to further develop and improve, and gain international expert consensus on, a standardised Physical Activity Messaging Framework and Checklist. METHODS: A modified Delphi study consisting of three online survey rounds was conducted. Each survey gathered feedback from an international expert panel using quantitative and qualitative methods. The framework and checklist were amended between each round based on survey results until consensus (defined a priori as 80% agreement) was reached. RESULTS: The final expert panel (n = 40, 55% female) came from nine countries and comprised academics (55%), healthcare and other professionals (22.5%) and government officials or policymakers (22.5%). Consensus was reached in survey 3 with 85 and 87.5% agreement on the framework and checklist, respectively. CONCLUSION: This study presents an expert- and evidence-informed framework and checklist for physical activity messaging. If used consistently, the Physical Activity Messaging Framework and Checklist may improve practice by encouraging evidence-based and target audience-focused messages, as well as enhance the research base on physical activity messaging by harmonising key terminologies and improving quality of reporting. Key next steps include further refining the Physical Activity Messaging Framework and Checklist based on their use in real-world settings. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12966-021-01182-z.

The health benefits of physically activity (PA) are well documented; therefore, promoting PA and associated guidelines to the population is considered an important task for any government. To support the strategy development for communication of the recently updated PA guidelines, the UK Chief Medical Officers' (CMO) Expert Panel for Communication was created. To help inform this process a rapid review was performed to identify how other nations may be tackling the communication of their PA guidelines and PA more generally. The rapid review used elements of the Health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) policy audit tool (PAT) created by the World Health Organization (WHO) and investigated all 195 countries. Seventy-seven countries had their own guidelines, 53 used the WHO guidelines (of which 47 used the Regional Office for Africa), and for 65 countries no guidelines could be found. For the communication of PA or PA guidelines, 27 countries used infographics, 56 had government policies/documents, and 11 used a mass media campaign. However only 6 of these communication strategies had been evaluated. Although many countries used infographics, there were no associated evaluations. As such any future communication strategies should incorporate an evaluation of effectiveness. Mass media campaigns had the strongest evidence base, proving to be an effective communication strategy, particularly when incorporating aspects of social marketing. This review provides an insight into what strategies countries worldwide have taken to communicate PA guidelines and PA promotion. These should be carefully considered when deciding how best to communicate and promote PA guidelines.