Project description
Standing up against elderly sedentary behaviour epidemic
Sitting may be the new smoking, and for the elderly, it could be even more deadly. With increasing sedentary behaviour among seniors, the risk for chronic disease and disability is on the rise. In this context, the EU-funded SITless project aims to enhance existing exercise referral schemes with self-management strategies to promote long-term behavioural change. The project will conduct a systematic review, focus groups, and a feasibility study, followed by a three-armed pragmatic randomised controlled trial involving 1 138 subjects over an 18 month follow-up period. The study will measure the effects on sedentary behaviour, physical function, healthcare use and costs, quality of life, and other parameters. The results of this study could help policymakers promote physical activity among the elderly population.
Objective
The increase of the elderly population leads to increased prevalence of frailty, risk for poor health outcomes, and related health and social care costs. Lack of physical activity (PA) and established sedentary behaviours (SB) constitute an additional burden, as they are related to progression of chronic disease and disabling conditions. An existing initiative to battle SB and insufficient PA levels are exercise referral schemes (ERS) implemented in primary care, where insufficiently active individuals are referred to a third party service (sports centre or leisure facility) that prescribes and monitors an exercise programme tailored to the patients’ needs. ERS had shown improvements in PA in the short-term, but may have limited power to change SB and produce long-term effects. Thus, ERS might be enhanced by self-management strategies (SMS) to promote behavioural change. Such strategies based on social cognitive theory have been shown to increase self-confidence, power to act, and involvement in exercise.
In a first stage, a systematic review, focus groups and a feasibility study will be conducted. Then, a three-armed pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) will assess the long-term effectiveness of a complex intervention on sedentary behaviour (SB) in an elderly population, based on existing ERS enhanced by self-management strategies (SMS). It will be compared to ERS alone and to general recommendations.
The RCT will include 1138 subjects and will have a follow up of 18 months. The effect on SB will be measured as activity daily counts per minute and physical function. Secondary outcomes will include: healthcare use and costs, self-rated health and quality of life, mortality, morbidity, disability, institutionalization, mental health, social capital, sarcopenia and safety parameters. SITless will assess policy makers in deciding how or whether ERS should be further implemented or restructured in order to increase its adherence, efficacy and cost-effectiveness.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- social sciences sociology demography mortality
- social sciences economics and business economics health economics
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.3.1. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Health, demographic change and well-being
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.3.1.3. - Treating and managing disease
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
RIA - Research and Innovation action
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-PHC-2014-2015
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
08041 Barcelona
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.