CAPACITY

Although the beneficial health effects of physical activity are well known, promotion of physical activity in elderly people with and without chronic conditions remains challenging.

In the CAPACITY project, we developed the physical activity intervention “Zäme go laufe” (ENG: Going on a walk together) that considered multiple determinants of physical activity (individual, interpersonal, cultural, environmental factors), used modern devices (smartphone with three apps) and followed a dynamic citizen-science approach where participants took part in the development process.

We targeted elderly persons, aged>60 years, from the community of the typical small Swiss town Wetzikon. ). We offered them a smartphone including a step-counter app, a calendar app and a messenger app (WhatsApp) to enable communication between participants (WhatsApp Group) and offered them six walking routes in their area in Wetzikon with varying levels of difficulty

We encouraged them to organize and schedule individual walk and path options and communicate the times and places to participants via the messenger app with support from the study team.

After the participants had used the smartphone for one week, we discussed with them their current daily steps and set together with them their individual step goals in the short- and long-term. We recommended them to communicate with one another via the WhatsApp group and further incentivized them to reach their goals through a “gamification” approach, where they receive “trophies” by the app when they attained a specific number of steps. We also encouraged them to invite friends to join the intervention. .

We evaluated the effect of the intervention in a prospective before-after intervention study. Assessments took place at baseline and after 6 months and included accelerometry-based physical activity measurements. Daily steps, how vigorous the excercise was and the duration of the exercise was measured.

Citizen Science:

•    Participants were involved in the development and organization of the intervention

•    Participants developed six new mapped walking trails on their own initiative

•    Participants are now involved in the transfer of the intervention into a self-sustained state without further support from the University

In total, 29 persons participated in the intervention.
Currently (May 2017), 23 participants conducted 6-months follow-up; 3 are still under follow-up and 3 dropped out. Those who already conducted follow-up did have a significant increase in daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (p=0.039) but not in daily steps (p=0.291).

Project participants:

Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich

Dr. Anja Frei, Kaba Dalla Lana, Dr. Thomas Radtke, Emily Stone, Prof. Dr. Milo Puhan

Graphic designers:

Lukas Gallati