2008 Faculty Researchers

Joe LeMaster, MD, MPH

Understanding Changes in Physical Activity in Older Adults: a qualitative study among older residents in Columbia ‘Neighbors on the Go’ Neighborhoods

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Department

Family and Community Medicine

Office Location

MA306 K Medical Sciences Building, DC032.00

Phone #:

Office: (573) 884-4534
Fax: (573) 884-6172

Summary

Regular, moderately intense physical activity has been proven to reduce cardiovascular disease risk and delay the onset of chronic diseases. In spite of the evidence, the rates of inactivity and obesity in the U.S. continues to increase. As a result chronic illnesses are on the increase and now amount to over one quarter of all health care costs.

The availability of walking or bike trails increases the number of people who are physically active as well as the level of activity. Elderly adults with chronic disease, especially those with low incomes, may benefit least from walking and bike trails. Additional interventions, such as mass media and social support interventions to set up walking or support groups, may be needed in order to get elderly adults involved.

••Since 2003, the Columbia PedNet Coalition, via its Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded Active Living by Design program "Bike, Walk and Wheel: a Way In Columbia" (BWW) has promoted community-wide increases in physical activity, and has been instrumental in helping Columbia compete for and obtain a $25 million federal transportation grant to extend pedestrian and bicycle trails into central Columbia, including traditionally low-income areas. In 2007, Dr. Stephen Sayers and Dr. Joseph LeMaster (the latter a Center on Aging Research Fellow), both from MU, with other non-MU investigators began collaboration to evaluate BWW. Based upon that experience, Drs. LeMaster's Summer Research Fellow will interview older (age > 50 years) community members in June/July 2008. Participants will include individuals who do vs. do not respond to a short-term community-based, mass media campaign to promote physical activity in a single Columbia neighborhood during the Spring of 2008. The information from this proposed study will be used to tailor the intervention for future use so that it is ‘friendly’ to older adults. The specific aim of this project will be to use semi-structured individual interviews with older community members (age 50 years and over) in the selected neighborhood to identify elements of the intervention and the infrastructural changes that residents perceive to be encouraging to begin physical activity (or otherwise) and to elicit from these community members recommendations for future tailored campaigns to ensure that they are “elder-friendly” .