Counseling Program Gets Seniors Moving

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Providing seniors with tailored physical activity advice in an approach called the "Green Prescription" program may be an effective way to help them increase their exercise levels, according to the results of a New Zealand study.

The findings suggest that "health and wellbeing of older people would improve if the Green Prescription program was used more in general practice," study author Dr. Ngaire Kerse, of the University of Auckland, told Reuters Health.

"Older people are an increasingly important sector of our society and health interventions should be offered to them," Kerse added.

Studies have shown that older people can reduce their risk of death from all causes, as well as death from cardiovascular disease, by increasing their levels of physical activity, regardless of their age, smoking and alcohol habits or the presence of other chronic disease. Increased physical activity can also protect older adults against hip fracture and is associated with better quality of life and well-being.

Furthermore, older adults may be more responsive to their doctor's advice about increasing their levels of physical activity and other prevention measures than their younger counterparts.

Kerse and colleagues investigated the effectiveness of physical activity counseling among 270 sedentary patients, aged 65 years or older. The study also included 117 doctors in the Waikato region of New Zealand.

Some study participants were assigned to a Green Prescription physical activity intervention group, in which doctors provided individualized exercise recommendations based on age, medical condition, capability and everyday activities, and faxed those recommendations to trained exercise specialists. The seniors then received follow-up telephone calls from the specialists over a three-month period, in addition to quarterly written material and newsletters. The other study participants were assigned to usual care from their physicians.

Only about three percent of New Zealanders each year receive a Green Prescription from their physician, the researchers note.

They found that seniors assigned to the Green Prescription group reported spending about 40 additional minutes per week engaged in leisure time moderate and vigorous activity after the year-long follow-up, compared with seniors in the usual care group, Kerse and colleagues report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The Green Prescription group also burned nearly three more kilocalories per kilogram each week than their peers did, the report indicates.

What's more, seniors who participated in the Green Prescription intervention also exhibited improvements in measures of vitality and general health, and experienced fewer hospitalizations than did seniors in the comparison group.

"This report should reinforce efforts to emphasize activity to older people," Kerse and colleagues write.

"Older people are just as responsive to activity programs as younger groups and are able to make meaningful increases in their level of activity relatively easily," Kerse told Reuters Health.

Whether the findings can be generalized to other countries is not known, but "it may be possible to implement a similar activity-promotion program" in the United States, for example, where comparable services are available through large health maintenance organizations, the researcher note.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, November 2005.