Enjoy physical activity to battle sedentary behaviour and inactivity among older adults from a socially inclusive perspective

ended

Sedentary behavior (SB) and insufficient physical activity (PA) has increased substantially over the last decades and especially with the COVID restrictions. SB increases with age and older adults are the least physically active age group. Robust evidence shows the health benefits of regular PA and the harms of high levels of SB along the ageing process. Moreover, enjoying PA is a key element to adhere and maintain this healthy behavior. However, the content of the programmes has been traditionally determined by the focus on the functional benefits of PA to prevent age-related disability. Therefore, JOIN4JOY aims to: a) co-create a programme for community-dwelling older adults (JOIN4JOY-C), and for long-term care residents (JOIN4JOY-LTC), focused on enjoyment and applying a social inclusion perspective to reduce socio-economic, cultural, health and disability-related barriers to access physical activity; b) create local and global virtual communities of practice to share knowledge and experiences and enhance the sustainability of the project; c) train professionals and students on behavior change techniques with a social inclusion perspective ; d) implement and evaluate the programme regarding feasibility, acceptability and impact; e) replicate the training with the train the trainers methodology. Accordingly, a co-creation process with end-users, family members, professionals, students and policy makers will be conducted through focus groups. A programme based on PA reinforced with self-management strategies to promote behavior change will be the basis for the co-creation. In addition, the octalysis gamification framework will be used to define the enjoyment component. We will develop a programme guide and a online training platform linked to the virtual communities of practice. We expect to reach a total of 144 end-users, 9-15 students and >300 professionals and to impact current research, policy and practice by promoting a change in the PA culture.