More than 18,000 people in BC will have a hip or knee replacement this year to treat severe pain and reduced mobility from arthritis. After surgery, most patients will have a short course of physiotherapy and be encouraged to engage in regular physical activity such as walking and cycling. However, our research shows that patients receive inconsistent advice and few supports to help them become more active. In fact, they are less active than guidelines recommend to promote health and less active than their healthy peers. There are community-based programs available to help people be active after surgery but we do not know where they are located or how well they are designed and delivered. Most importantly, we want to learn if these programs are safe and help people to become active after joint replacement surgery. To answer these questions, we propose to search websites and query providers to find programs available in BC and describe program features. We will then bring together researchers, healthcare providers, fitness leaders, and patients for a 1½-day meeting to decide what makes a community-based exercise program safe, easy to access, open to everyone, and helpful for people with a hip or knee replacement.
Research Location: Centre for Hip Health and Mobility (CHHM)
SuPA Mobility: Supporting Physical Activity for Mobility in Older Adults with Mobility Limitations
Problem
As individuals age, they have a greater risk of limited mobility, or difficulty in getting around safely in one’s environment. Limited mobility is linked to illness, disease, and decreased quality of life.
Recent research show increasing physical activity by 6-minutes per day can improve mobility and prevent future disability. Despite the positive impacts on health, many older Canadians do not perform sufficient physical activity. Health coaching, a person-centered process to change behaviors with goal-setting, action planning, and feedback, is effective at improving physical activity participation in older adults. However, none of the previous health coaching studies included older adults with limited mobility.
Research
This study aims to address this knowledge gap to evaluate if health coaching can improve mobility and increase physical activity in older adults with limited mobility. We will conduct a 6-month study comparing health coaching to health education on improving mobility in older adults aged with limited mobility.
Potential Impact
Increasing physical activity through the use of health coaching has the potential to improve mobility and decrease the negative health impacts of limited mobility in older adults.
Exercise for Healthy Aging: Mobilizing Knowledge with Users and Clinicians in BC
The number of adults over the age of 65 is expected to double in the next 20 years. Maintaining both cognitive function (i.e., thinking abilities) and mobility (i.e., the ability to move) are vital to functional independence and quality of life. Exercise can improve cognitive function and mobility in older adults.
However, many older adults are inactive. Key barriers to exercise include: 1) lack of motivation; 2) medical conditions, such as arthritis; and 3) lack of knowledge on how to exercise safely and effectively. To address these barriers, we will: i) disseminate the latest evidence on the benefits of exercise for cognitive function and mobility via a public forum; ii) deliver interactive workshops during which older adults (and caregivers) will learn how to exercise safely, how to individualize exercises, how to progress exercises, how to use popular wearables (e.g., Fitbit), and strategies to achieve a balanced 24-hour activity cycle for overall health; and iii) develop online resources capturing the content of the interactive workshops.
The intent of the public forum, workshops, and online resources is to motivate and enable older adults to uptake exercise, and thereby contribute to the global agenda of healthy aging.