Promoting Sustainable Community Change in Support of Older Adult Physical Activity: Evaluation Findings from the Southeast Seattle Senior Physical Activity Network (SESPAN)

Abstract

Researchers have identified as effective and worthy of broader dissemination a variety of intervention strategies to promote physical activity among older adults. This paper reports results of a community-organizing approach to disseminating evidencebased interventions in a sustainable way: The Southeast Seattle Senior Physical Activity Network (SESPAN). SESPAN was implemented in Southeast Seattle, a group of multicultural neighborhoods extending 8 miles southeast of downtown Seattle, with a population of 56,469 in 2000, with 12% (7,041) aged 65 and older. The SESPAN organizing strategy involved networking to: (1) make connections between two or more community organizations to create new senior physical activity programs; and (2) build coalitions of community groups and organizations to assist in making larger scale environmental and policy changes to increase senior physical activity. The SESPAN evaluation used an uncontrolled prospective design focusing on sustainable community changes, including new or modified programs, policies, and practices. Networking among organizations led to the creation of 16 ongoing exercise classes and walking groups, serving approximately 200 older adults in previously underserved Southeast Seattle communities. In addition, the project's health coalition is sustaining current activities and generating new programs and environmental changes. The success of the SESPAN organizing model depended on identifying and involving champions in partner organizations who provided support and resources for implementing programs.

Implementation of a co-designed physical activity program for older adults: positive impact when delivered at scale

“…Successfully enrolling this ‘elusive’ target population, high attendance rates and completion of selected CTM activities by participants, together highlight the essential role of community-based delivery partner organizations—a central element of scale up in diverse settings [ 25 , 50 ]. The importance of partnerships was recognized in delivering scalable, sustainable PA to older adults in a Seattle based program [ 51 ]. Again, this is consistent with socioecological models that emphasize the need to engage multi-levels and multi-sectors [ 38 , 52 ] through collaborative partnerships and ongoing stakeholder interaction [ 20 ] .…”

Effects of Physical Activity Governmental Programs on Health Status in Independent Older Adults: A Systematic Review

“…However, after checking the full texts of these studies, 39 of them were excluded since twelve were not PA governmental programs (Aoki et al, 2015;Brach, Nieder, Nieder, & Mechling, 2009;Burton, Lewin, Clemson, & Boldy, 2013;Etkin, Prohaska, Harris, Latham, & Jette, 2006;Filiatrault et al, 2008;Nguyen et al, 2007;Gawler et al, 2016;Liang et al, 2017;Matsudo et al, "Effects of Physical Activity Governmental Programs on Health Status in Independent Older Adults: A Systematic Review" by Valdés-Badilla P et al Journal of Aging andPhysical Activity © 2018 Human Kinetics, Inc. 2003;Quehenberger, Cichocki, & Krajic, 2014;Robitaille et al, 2012;Zgibor et al, 2016), five included participants younger than 60 years old in their samples (Ablah et al, 2015;Cameron, Chahine, Selig, & Newton, 2008;Hetherington et al, 2015;Martinson et al, 2010;Wilcox, Dowda, Wegley, & Ory, 2009), nine did not respond to the object of study of the present review (Babazono, Kuwabara, Hagiihara, Nagano, & Ishihara, 2011;Cheadle, Egger, LoGerfo, Walwick, & Schwartz, 2010a;Dangour et al, 2007;Filiatrault et al, 2007;Goodman, Davies, Tai, Dinan, & Iliffe, 2007;Griffin et al, 2010;Hayashi, Kondo, Suzuki, Yamada, & Matsumoto, 2014;Kanamori et al, 2012;Stewart et al, 2006), six just collected results from only one assessment (post-evaluation) of the participants (Benedetti, Schwingel, Gomez, & Chodzko-Zajko, 2012;Cheadle, Egger, LoGerfo, Schwartz, & Harris, 2010b;da Fonte et al, 2016;Figueira et al, 2009;Valdés-Badilla et al, 2017;…”

Associations between active living-oriented zoning and no adult leisure-time physical activity in the U.S.

“…It was somewhat unsurprising that zoning for crosswalks was not statistically associated with no LTPA given that crosswalks are a feature of the environment shown to facilitate children's active travel to school (Boarnet et al, 2005; McDonald et al, 2010) and older-adult PA (Chaudhury et al, 2012; Cheadle et al, 2010) (which was not studied herein) but less so PA among adults aged 18-64 (McGinn et al, 2007; Sallis et al, 2015) who were the focus of this study. Older adults have different PA patterns due to age-related physiological changes, so they were excluded from this study (Chodzko-Zajko et al, 2009; Milanović et al, 2013).…”