ArticleTranslating Effective Clinic-Based Physical Activity Interventions into Practice
Section snippets
Dissemination of Physical Activity Recommendations
Much has been published on the essential nature of regular physical activity across the lifespan for psychological and physical health during pregnancy, physical development of children, and sustained health-related quality of life throughout adulthood and into the senior years.5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 These findings have been formulated into a range of recommendations and disseminated, most broadly by the U.S. Surgeon General’s report on Physical Activity and Health.11 As a result of these
Current Evidence Base for Medical Office-Based Physical Activity Interventions
The attraction of using medical offices as a location for physical activity interventions developed primarily for two reasons. First, because of the breadth of the population that is served by primary care providers, medical offices represent a location to deliver interventions that could have a broad public health impact. In fact, a recent study suggests that as many as 90% of patients would consider participating in a physical activity intervention initiated through a medical office.18
Lack of Evidence That Promising Clinic-Based Interventions Are Translated Into Practice
Translation of research into practice can be defined as the uptake, implementation, and sustainability of research findings within standard care. This brief review of recent studies, the USPSTF review, and Community Guide findings suggest that there is evidence that medical office-based physical activity interventions can lead to successful behavior change when applied in a manner that consistently implements the 5A’s of behavior-change counseling. As such, there is a need to achieve
Move More: An Example of a Multilevel Systems Approach to Translation
A trial was recently completed that utilized a multileveled systems approach to heighten the likelihood of system uptake, implementation, and sustainability of the intervention.40, 61 Figure 3 depicts the application of a systems model to the development, testing, and translation of Move More, a medical office-based team building physical activity intervention (see Table 1 and Estabrooks et al.40 for the Move More application of the 5A’s).
The targeted delivery sites for Move More were primary
Recommendations for Researchers to Enhance Translation of Clinic-Based Physical Activity Interventions
We recommend three general areas of consideration prior to the development and efficacy testing of any clinic-based physical activity intervention. First, consistent with a systems approach to translation, it is necessary to identify and understand the system structure(s) in which the intervention will be delivered.45 It is advisable to complete an assessment of the explicit purpose or mission of an organization. The research team should also understand the roles of individuals within the
Conclusion
As illustrated in Figure 2, Figure 3, a systems perspective model of physical activity translation research focuses on interactions among the physical activity program, the delivery setting(s), and the research or evaluation design. This model stresses the importance of contextual factors and the interactions among contextual factors and outcomes (moderator effects). Although oversimplified, these figures illustrate the complexity and importance of understanding that program delivery staff is
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2021, Patient Education and CounselingExamining the feasibility and characteristics of realistic weight management support for patients: Focus groups with rural, micropolitan, and metropolitan primary care providers
2021, Preventive Medicine ReportsCitation Excerpt :Furthermore, issues related to the research to practice translation may also differ between rural and urban primary care settings where the availability of local resources differs significantly. The purpose of this research was to understand preliminary feasibility of implementing an evidence-based WMI through primary care, concentrating on factors related to the patient (e.g. patient identification and engagement, weight loss initiation and maintenance), clinical adoption (e.g. scalability, clinical uptake), and sustainability, all of which are key for the translation of evidence-based interventions into practice (Estabrooks and Russell, 2006; Leeman et al., 2017, 2015; Chorpita et al., 2005). Secondary aims were to explore the successes and challenges of weight management programming that may already be present in clinics and to explore differences among clinics serving rural/micropolitan (cities with a population < 50,000) and metropolitan areas.
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