Moving More: Supporting Uptake of Evidence for Physical Activity in Older Adults with Complex Health Care Needs

Physical frailty is a medical condition of reduced function and health in older adults. Physically frail older adults also often have chronic conditions that contribute to a higher chance of them being limited in daily activities, becoming dependent, and death. Chronic conditions, such as heart disease, osteoarthritis, and type-2 diabetes, are linked to frailty. Physical activity can help to better manage chronic conditions and prevent frailty, but this older adult population is often not active enough. We have recently showed that physical activity counselling by a physiotherapist can help older adults with chronic conditions to stay active. Key to that study was having a physiotherapist working with the person to develop a 'doable' physical activity plan, and make updates over time. In this project, we will adapt this counselling approach using the new Canadian 24-hour Movement Guidelines for older adults at an early state of frailty and with chronic conditions. We will then test this new approach with the one in current use by physiotherapists. We will compare whether the new approach is better at increasing the time older adults spend in physical activities than the current approach. Also, we will assess if the physiotherapists are able to offer the physical activity counselling as intended when they work with older patients. This work will be done by the Moving More Team, which includes experts in health research, physiotherapists, people with chronic conditions, older adults and their caregivers. We will use the results to develop a large-scale study across Canada to test if and how the new counselling approach helps to support older adults to be more physically active within a 24-hour day.