What are the most effective ways of promoting physical exercise ...(rescribe physical activity to inactive p...),Health

Date:7/13/2009

rescribe physical activity to inactive patients who visit them, as well as the practice of GPs referring patients to counselling sessions with an exercise physiologist at their local general practice. Internet advice on physical activity, the promotion of pedo meters in the community, and a mass media campaign that promoted physical activity and community events and activities, were also assessed.

A standardized approach has been developed to assess cost-effectiveness of different physical activity programs that are suitable in an Australian context, so the researchers were able to compare these six interventions. They calculated the health outcomes of each intervention in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) the number of healthy years of life lost as a result of premature death or illness through already published data on how physical activity causes heart disease, stroke, colon and breast cancer, and diabetes. Offsetting the financial cost of each intervention against the number of years of death or injury (or DALYs) that the intervention averted, they concluded that the program promoting the pedometer as a motivational tool for physical exercise and the mass media campaign were the most cost-effective. The GP practice of referring patients to an exercise physiologist was the least cost-effective, especia lly if time and travel costs were considered.

Only the pedometer program and the mass media campaign of the six interventions resulted in an overall cost-saving, but the researchers stress that if the six interventions are considered together "it is likely that the package of interventions would not only be cost-effective by very likely cost-saving to the health sector." The researchers point out that questions remain about the long-term effectiveness of these programs, and that the quality of the evidence in the literature they reviewed varied. But importantly, the standardized approach to cost-effectiveness offers a model to gui
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Contact: Andrew Hyde press@plos.org 44-122-346-3330 Public Library of Science Source:Eurekalert

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