Promotion of physical activity in primary health care settings: evaluation of the Saúde Ativa Rio Claro program

Abstract

To evaluate the association between participation in the SaúdeAtiva Rio Claro (SARC) program and physical activity (PA) levels among adult women. A case control study was conducted in seven primary health care settings in Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil. The sample included 111 women participating in the intervention (mean age: 58±13 years). For each participant, we selected a non participant, matched to the intervention participant by age (± 5 years) and neighborhood. The program provides 1-hour multimodal exercise twice a week as well as general advice about health self-care. PA was measured using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) long version. While 18.0% of the non participants reported practicing 150 min/wk of leisure-time PA (LTPA) or more, 61.3% of the participants achieved such threshold (OR= 7.2; IC95%: 3.8-13.3). Participants performed more minutes compared to non-participants, even omitting the 100 min/wk of PA provided by the intervention (p<0.001). In addition to providing 100 min/wk of PA, SARC, an exercise promotion intervention in primary health care settings in Brazil, stimulates participants to increase PA levels in other settings. (OR=7,2; IC=3,(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)3 Keywords