OP0007-PARE CAMPAIGN TO PROMOTE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY & EXERCISE TO RMD PATIENTS THROUGH EDUCATION AND PRACTICE

Abstract

Background:Eular give’ s a lot of attention to outline the need of a change in RMD patients life style that is very well outlined into the 2018 Eular recommendations for Physical Activity (PA).Objectives:Driven by those recommendations that says that “PA should be an integral part of standard care throughout the course of disease”, CypLAR decided to create a campaign to promote PA through educating RMD patients on the PA benefits, make them to change their life style and enroll them to PA programs. More over we want to inform Rheumatologist and HPR’s on that effort and enroll them to that campaign.The CypLAR’ s goal through that campaign is to manage and enroll as much as possible patients to PA Programs for a continual period of about 10 months.Methods:To achieve all the above we decided to move to the following steps:Offer PA Programs organized by CypLAR or HPR associatesIncrease awareness regarding the benefits of the PA (Land based & Aquatic) programs to Rheumatologists, HPR’s and RMD patientsIntegrate PA into National Health System and proceduresOffer incentivesResults:We managed to increase the PA programs that we used to offer from 1 to 3 in every major cities with also some more opportunities ahead. That also increases the number of participants attracting around 100 participants instead of 20 that we uses to before.Towards awareness, we presented Exercise rehabilitation in conferences around Europe (Agora 2017,2018,2019, Eular 2018, Cyprus – Crete Conference 2017, 2019, Enfa 2019, Pain Conference, Athens 2019) and also published related articles on CypLAR’s magazine that is published twice a year that is distributed to more than 5000 members.We managed to include the Aquatic Exercise Rehabilitation to the new National Strategic plan for Rheumatic Diseases.As incentives, we created a fund that is addressed to partially support low income patients. Furthermore we acquire special discount membership fees to our members on PA programs that are offered by associates.We organize our own sport related fund events and also participate in others sport funding events. Especially the Charity Swimming Event “Swim for my fellow” which is co-organized by the Iacovou Swimming Centre and Cyplar for the last 5 years is also under the Limassol Municipality Annual Sport Events called “Lemesia” which this year will have an International promotion due Limassol’s Award as the “European City of Sports” for 2020.We are in the process and in contact with big companies in order to become our campaign SponsorsWe attracted a fund of €2000 from Cyprus Sport Organization that offered a partial financial support to 30 patients for their participation in PA programs for 3 months.Conclusion:We all believe that the success on that campaign is based on Education (articles, presentations), the available options (programs/positions to participate) and Incentives (financial) that all of them needs further development.Disclosure of Interests:None declared