Abstract P186: “It Was Just For Us”: Qualitative Evaluation Of An Exercise Intervention For Older African-american Couples

Abstract

Introduction: Promoting long-term exercise adherence should be a key focus for health and fitness professionals working to reduce obesity and cardiometabolic health disparities, and all-cause mortality in inactive African-American (AA) adults. Data have suggested that romantic partners can improve long-term exercise adherence and that this dyadic approach should be examined in exercise interventions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct a qualitative process evaluation of a pilot exercise intervention conducted in older AA couples. The intervention itself examined whether exercising together influenced exercise adherence and cardiometabolic risk. Methods: Two semi-structured focus groups were utilized to compare experiences across two randomly assigned treatment conditions (exercising together with partner [ET: n=8] versus exercising separately [ES: n=6]). Participants (mean age: 64.7±6.8 years; body mass index 30.4±4.8 kg/m 2 ) of a previous 12-week pilot exercise intervention (walking ≥3 days/week, 30 minutes/day plus supervised resistance training 2 days/week) were interviewed. Investigators used guidelines for process evaluation and the context of the intervention to design the focus group guide. Verbatim transcripts were coded using an open coding approach. Results: Three key themes emerged (Table 1). Although all couples identified health and relationship benefits of the intervention, some differences surfaced within themes across the two intervention groups. Conclusions: These data will help investigators continue to develop the intervention, which is ultimately designed to promote long-term exercise adherence to reduce cardiometabolic health disparities in the AA community.