Interventions by health professionals improve participation in moderate to vigorous physical activity

Physical activity (PA) interventions, whether delivered or prompted by health professionals in primary care, result in greater participation in self-reported moderate-to-vigorous intensity PA (MVPA), a recent study has found.

“Such interventions should be considered for routine implementation to increase levels of PA and improve health outcomes in the population,” the researchers said.

In this systematic review and meta-analysis, randomized controlled trials of aerobic-based PA interventions delivered or prompted by health professionals in primary care with a usual care control group or another control group that did not involve PA were searched from inception to September 2020 in databases, trial registries, and grey literature sources.

Two independent reviewers sifted through the search results, extracted data from eligible trials, and assessed risk of bias using the Cochrane risk of bias tool (version 2). The researchers performed inverse variance meta-analyses to examine between-group difference in MVPA (min/week) from baseline to final follow-up and evaluated the odds of meeting the guidelines for MVPA at follow-up.

The meta-analysis included 14,566 unique reports and 46 randomized controlled trials with a total of 16,198 participants.

PA interventions delivered or prompted by health professionals led to a 14-min/week increase (95 percent confidence interval [CI], 4.2‒24.6; p=0.006) in MVPA. Heterogeneity was substantial (I², 91 percent; p<0.001). In analyses limited to trials that used a device to measure PA, no significant between-group difference was observed in MVPA (mean difference, 4.1 min/week, 95 percent CI, ‒1.7 to 9.9; p=0.17; I², 56 percent; p=0.008).

In trials that used self-report measures, PA interventions resulted in 24-min/week (95 percent CI, 6.3‒41.8; p=0.008; I², 72 percent; p<0.001) more MVPA relative to controls. Interventions also increased the odds of patients meeting guidelines for MVPA by 33 percent (95 percent CI, 1.17‒1.50; p<0.001; I², 25 percent; p=0.11).

Of note, 14 of 46 studies were at high risk of bias. However, sensitivity analyses that excluded these studies did not change the results of the study.