Brief Interventions for Physical Activity

Introduction

Regular physical activity is associated with enhanced health and reduced risk of all-cause mortality. Beyond the effects on mortality, physical activity has many health benefits, including reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, ischemic stroke,non–insulin-dependent (type 2) diabetes, colon cancers, osteoporosis, depression, and fall-related injuries. Despite the benefits of regular physical activity, only 25% of adults in the United States report engaging in the recommended amounts of physical activity (i.e., 30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity on 5 or more days per week, or 20 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity on 3 or more days per week); 29% report no leisure-time regular physical activity; and only 27% of students (grades 9 through 12) engage in moderate-intensity physical activity (30 minutes, 5 or more days per week). According to Healthy People 2010, physical activity is ranked as a leading health indicator. The Physical Activity objectives for Healthy People 2020  has developed goals to improve health fitness and quality of life through daily physical activity.

Recommendations to increase physical activity have been made for individuals and clinical settings but not for community settings. Increased physical activity has been linked not only to behavioral and social correlates but also to physical and social environmental correlates. Therefore, the role of community-based interventions to promote physical activity has emerged as a critical piece of an overall strategy to increase physical activity behaviors among the people of the United States

Physical activity levels are positively affected by:

• Individual behavior around active living.

• Structural environments, such as the availability of sidewalks, bike lanes, trails, and parks.
• Legislative policies that improve access to facilities that support physical activity.

Strategies to Increase Physical Activity:

Informational Approaches to Increasing Physical Activity: by providing information necessary to motivate and enable people to change their behavior, as well as to maintain that change over time. The interventions use primarily educational approaches to present both general health information, including information about cardiovascular disease prevention and risk reduction, as well as specific information about physical activity and exercise. The focus is mainly on the cognitive skills thought to precede behavior. The provision of information is intended to change knowledge about the benefits of physical activity, increase awareness of opportunities within a community for increasing physical activity, explain methods for overcoming barriers and negative attitudes about physical activity, and increase participation in community-based activities.

Interventions reviewed here are:

(1) “point-of-decision” prompts are the signs placed by elevators and escalators to encourage the use of stairs for health benefits.

(2) community-wide education campaigns: involve many community sectors in highly visible, broad-based, multiple intervention approaches to increasing physical activity. Campaign messages are directed to large and relatively undifferentiated audiences through diverse media, including television, radio, newspaper columns and inserts, direct mailings, billboards, advertisements in transit outlets, and trailers in movie theaters.

(3) mass media campaigns, and

(4) classroom-based health education focused on information provision and skills related to decision making.

References

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