Multi-Stakeholder Retrospective Acceptability of a Peer Support Intervention for Exercise Referral

Abstract

Perceived social support opportunities are central to successful exercise referral scheme (ERS) client experiences. However, there remains a lack of guidance on how ERSs can embed social support opportunities within their provision. This study presents retrospective acceptability findings from a 12-week social-identity-informed peer support intervention to enhance perceived social support among clients of an English ERS. Five peer volunteers were recruited, trained, and deployed in supervised ERS sessions across two sites. Peers assisted exercise referral officers (EROs) by providing supplementary practical, informational, motivational, and emotional support to ERS clients. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with peers (n = 4), EROs (n = 2), and clients (n = 5) and analysed thematically. The analysis identified three primary themes. The first theme detailed how EROs utilised peer volunteers to supplement the ERS client experience. This theme delineated peer roles within the ERS context and identified salient individual peer characteristics that contributed to their success. The second theme described peer acceptability among the various stakeholders. Peers were valued for their ability to reduce burden on EROs and to enhance perceptions of comfort among ERS clients. The final theme presented participant feedback regarding how the intervention may be further refined and enhanced. Peers represented a cost-effective and acceptable means of providing auxiliary social support to ERS clients. Moving forward, the structured integration of peers can improve the accessibility of social support among ERS participants, thus facilitating better rates of ERS completion.

Roadmap to 2030 for Drug Evaluation in Older Adults

“…Improving collection and communication of age‐related information in labeling throughout the product lifecycle is necessary to support decision making by patients and healthcare providers or caregivers. One mechanism could, if appropriate under applicable legal and regulatory requirements, be establishment of a postmarketing requirement or postmarketing commitment 82 . This mechanism could address gaps in knowledge related to under‐representation of older adults in clinical trials that may impact safety or effectiveness.…”

“…One mechanism could, if appropriate under applicable legal and regulatory requirements, be establishment of a postmarketing requirement or postmarketing commitment. 82 This mechanism could address gaps in knowledge related to underrepresentation of older adults in clinical trials that may impact safety or effectiveness. It can assess clinical differences in safety, effectiveness, PK or PD in specific age groups, in older patients with prevalent related conditions, such as impaired renal function, or potential drug interactions that may be significant in the older patient population.…”

Training of Peer Leaders: A Strategy to Enhance Provision of Psychosocial Support to Vulnerable Learners in Schools

“…In order to be effective, peer leadership training programmes need not to be viewed as one-day events by the trainers Casdagli, Fredman, Huckle, Mahony Christie (2021). As argued by Portman, Levy, Maher & Fairclough (2021), training programmes of peer leaders are not a one-time event, instead, they should be ongoing as a way of supervising peer leaders to improve their ability to provide accurate information including confidently influencing their peers in a positive away. Monitoring and evaluation of the peer leadership training programmes is necessary in order to regularly collect and analyse information, which is then used to guide the training programme, for example, either to continue on its course or change direction (Zakarija-Grković, Cattaneo, Bettinelli, M. Pilato, Vassallo, Borg Buontempo, & Gupta, 2020).…”