Leader Behaviors, Group Cohesion, and Participation in a Walking Group Program

Abstract

Background Fewer than half of all U.S. adults meet the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines. Leader behaviors and group cohesion have been associated with increased participation or adherence in sports team and exercise class settings. Physical activity interventions in community settings that encompass these factors may enhance intervention adherence. Purpose To examine the impact of Community Health Promoter leader behaviors and group cohesion on participation in a walking group intervention among racially/ethnically diverse adults in low-to-moderate income communities in Detroit, Mich. Design Data for the current study were drawn from the Walk Your Heart to Health (WYHH) data set. WYHH was a multi-site cluster randomized controlled study with a lagged intervention and outcome measurements at baseline, four, eight, and 32 weeks. Pooled survey data from both intervention arms is used for the current study. Data were analyzed between August 2013 and October 2014. Setting/participants A total of 603 non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic White, and Hispanic adults across five cohorts that began the 32-week WYHH intervention between March 2009 and October 2011. Intervention A 32-week long walking group program hosted by community- and faith-based organizations and facilitated by Community Health Promoters. Walking groups met three times per week for 90-minutes per session. To promote participation in or adherence to WYHH, Community Health Promoters used evidence-based strategies to facilitate group cohesion. Group members assumed increasing leadership responsibility for facilitating sessions over time. Main outcome measures Participation in WYHH as measured by consistency of attendance. Results Community Health Promoter leader behaviors were positively associated with participation in WYHH. Social but not task cohesion was significantly associated with consistent participation. Social cohesion may mediate the relationship between leader behaviors and walking group participation. Conclusions Providing leaders with training to build socially cohesive groups may help motivate individuals to continue participation in community-based physical activity programs.

Inequities and inequalities in outdoor walking groups: a scoping review

“…For example, Walking for Health has approximately 70,000 participants across the UK [73], and 5045 adults were exposed to walking groups across the 14 identified intervention studies. When we examined reach across PROGRESS-Plus characteristics, however, walkers were predominantly women [37,45,46,50,53,56,59,75,76,78,82,89,90], white [43,46,75,76,89], socioeconomically advantaged [38,46,71,72,75,77] and mid-to-older aged [15,20,40,46,49,53,55,59,75,76,90]. Overall, our assessment corroborated previous findings [6,7,19,20], and contrasted with Ball et al's recent conclusions [5].…”

“…Literature showed that outdoor walking groups resulted in increased physical activity (according to both objective and subjective measures) and numerous health benefits, with negligible negative outcomes. These benefits were both physical and psychological, and included increased physical fitness [50]; decreased hypertension and positive changes in blood lipoproteins [37,60,71,82]; decreased breathlessness [52]; increased self-efficacy and relaxation [77]; and reductions in depression [38] and anxiety [50]. Thus, our findings largely support previous reviews [6,7].…”

“…Intervention studies (n = 14) tended to state a prospective intention to focus walking group provision towards particular social groups based on at least one PROGRESS-Plus factor, including race and ethnicity [35,42,57,60,71,72,74,82,[86][87][88]; place of residence [39,60,71,72,77,82]; gender [43,47,57,88]; age [50,67]; occupation [78][79][80]; and education [38]. In total, 33 articles included in this review aimed to examine factors associated with physical activity participation among pre-determined population subgroups.…”

“…Alluding to the appeal of such programmes, several studies demonstrated that Hispanic and non-Latino Black subpopulations do participate in outdoor walking groups [35,39,42,45,57,60,69,71,72,74,79,82,83,[86][87][88]. However, all seven were based in the USA, and five specifically targeted minority ethnic groups.…”

What approaches to social prescribing work, for whom, and in what circumstances? A realist review

“…Evidence in our targeted searches also suggested that the real or perceived skill of the activity leader were instrumental in ongoing Adherence, these include: psychological support (Estabrooks et al, ; Izumi et al, ), motivational capacity (Caperchione, Mummery, & Duncan, ), trust (Estabrooks et al, ; Izumi et al, ), and promoting a positive environment (Estabrooks et al, ; Izumi et al, ).…”