Physical Activity for Lifetime Success (PALS)

University of Washington: Health Promotion Research Center

Topics:
Aging & Elderly Health | Nutrition & Physical Activity for Adults

The PALS project builds on the center’s 19 years of helping older adults (aged 65 years or older) in Seattle’s King County become physically active, which can reduce symptoms of several chronic illnesses such as depression, diabetes, and heart disease. PALS, includes an intervention to change individual physical activity levels as well as strategies to change the environment and policies to support exercise in an area where many ethnically diverse and low-income older adults live.

In the individual intervention, primary care doctors at two local clinics are partnering with the local senior center to increase physical activity among 200 senior patients who have a diagnosis of diabetes. (Half the study participants are assigned to a comparison group that receives the intervention one year after the first group.) During clinic visits, health care providers counsel patients about the importance of exercise, develop a written recommendation tailored to each patient, and provide a list of local resources. Providers ask patients if they would like to be referred to a physical activity support program (which the center adapted from Active Choices, a telephone-assisted physical activity counseling program developed by Stanford University). The program, provided by a local senior center, pairs each participant with a peer who offers motivation and support for increasing physical activity via phone calls over a 6- to 12-month period. When appropriate, the senior center will also refer participants to other programs developed and tested by the prevention research center and its collaborators, such as EnhanceFitness (formerly known as the Lifetime Fitness Program; see Fitness Program for Seniors), a low-cost exercise class offered at many senior and community centers, and PEARLS, an in-home program delivered by community social workers to reduce symptoms of minor depression among older adults.

Participants in the support program periodically complete the Rapid Assessment of Physical Activity (RAPA) questionnaire used to assess their level of physical activity. Researchers will use aggregated group data from the clinic’s diabetes registry to compare health characteristics of people who participate in PALS with those of non-participants. Researchers will also analyze process data collected by the volunteers and staff of PALS at the senior center. To increase the community’s capacity, researchers are helping develop a network of local service providers and other community stakeholders who can support physical activity and participate in conducting a communitywide campaign about the benefits of physical activity for older adults.

 

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