Project 459785

Impaired mobility, social isolation and chronic health conditions can compromise health and wellbeing in older adults. There is strong evidence that meeting Canada's 24-Hour Movement guidelines, by getting adequate sleep, reducing sedentary time, and participating in regular physical activity can improve many health outcomes. Also, certain types of exercise can prevent falls, or arthritis pain, such as specific balance exercises and muscle strengthening exercises. However, implementing the guidelines and exercise programs in the real-world is hard. Health care providers interact with a large proportion of the population, but don't have time to teach exercise, and don't know where to refer patients. Community program providers often deliver falls prevention or other exercise programs, but are often not aware of the latest research or guidelines, so evidence-based programs may not get implemented. In a collaboration between researchers and community service, primary care, digital health and advocacy organizations, we will: a) build a physical activity eReferral tool into medical record systems, so health care providers can seamlessly refer patients to community-based physical activity programs; and b) collaborate with community organizations to develop an IDEAS for Healthy Cities Implementation guide, so that organizations across Canada can implement exercise programs that have been shown to be effective for preventing falls, fractures and arthritis pain. eReferral exists in Ontario, but is not designed for physical activity referrals. We will interview patients and health care providers, and collaborate on the development of programs and eReferral processes (Phase 1), test usability (Phase 2), pilot test them in Kitchener, Waterloo and other cities (Phase 3), and then scale them up more broadly and evaluate them. Our vision is physically active Canadians, achieved by creating supportive environments in health care and community.