“Enjoy physical activity to battle sedentary behaviour and inactivity among older adults from a socially inclusive perspective”  is an Erasmus-Sport 2021 Project which involves different countries including Italy (Istituto Europeo per lo sviluppo socio economico associazione), France (Sport Initiative et Loisir Bleu Association), Denmark (Syddansk Universitet), Germany (Agaplesion Bethesda Klinik Ulm), and Spain (Fundació Salut i Envelliment, Fundació Blanquerna, Fundació Universitària Balmes) . It began in June 2022 and has a total duration of 3 years.

MD Laura Coll-Planas, PhD is the PI of the project,  Javier Jerez-Roig leads WP4 (Long-term care setting) and Andrea Fuente-Vidal is the project assistant. Other M3O members actively involved in this project includes Montse Romero-Mas, Ricard Castro-Prat, Eduard Minobes-Molina and Carles Parés-Martínez.

 

Sedentary behaviour and physical inactivity have increased substantially over the last decades and especially with the COVID restrictions. They commonly increase with ageing and older adults are the least physically active age group. Robust evidence shows the health benefits of regular physical activity and the harms of high levels of sedentary behaviour along the ageing process. Traditionally, interventional programmes have focused on the achievement of functional benefits to prevent age-related disability. The Join4Joy project aims to add enjoyment as a key element to promote adherence and maintainance of healthy activity-related behaviours.

The aims of the project are:

  • to co-create a programme focused on enjoyment. On the one hand JOIN4JOY-C for the community-dwelling older adults, and on the other hand JOIN4JOY-LTC for long-term care residents, applying a social inclusion perspective to reduce socioeconomic, cultural, health and disability-related barriers to achieve adequate levels of physical activity.
  • to create local and global virtual communities of practice where knowledge and experiences can be shared and to enhance the sustainability of the project.
  • to train professionals and students on behaviour change techniques with a social inclusion perspective.
  • to implement and evaluate the programme regarding its feasibility, acceptability, and impactand finally
  • toreplicate the training by educating other professionals and students with a train the trainer’s methodology.

 

The methodology used in this project will be the co-creation process with end-users, family members, professionals, students, and policy makers, that will be conducted through focus groups. The basis for the co-creation will be the programme based on physical activity reinforced with self-management strategies to promote behaviour change. The Octalysis gamification framework will be used to define the enjoyment component.  A programme guide and an online training platform linked to the virtual communities of practice will be developed. The project will reach a total of 144 end-users, 9-15 students and more than 300 professionals.  Join4Joy is expected to impact science by providing new scientific data, adding the perspective of stakeholders and end-users into planning of physical activity and sedentary behaviour activities, promoting change through joy and widely spreading knowledge by cascade training current and future professionals.

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