Exploring the Barriers and Facilitators to Physical Activity Behaviour in Older Adults With Intellectual Disabilities: Lessons From and for a Co-Design Study.
Kim Adriaanse, Jos J Kraal, Marije S Bunskoek and 2 others
PMID 41808382WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults with intellectual disabilities in one care home said pain, fear of falling and past bad experiences stopped them moving.
What helped was doing activity with someone else, encouragement and compliments, and activities matched to their interests rather than being told to exercise.
Key findings
01Age-related problems such as mobility limits, pain and low energy, fear of falling, and negative past experiences of activity were the main personal barriers; most residents were inactive during the day and preferred not to move.
02Contextual barriers were dependence on other people to get moving, caregivers lacking time, priority and sometimes motivation, missing materials or space, and not being able to go outside without supervision because of traffic and curbs.
03What helped was doing the activity with someone else, enthusiastic encouragement and compliments, and activities matched to the person's own interests and abilities; framing sessions around fun rather than 'physical activity' mattered because that term put people off.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Six residents in a single care home in the Netherlands, all with mild to moderate intellectual disability and aged 57 to 87. Nothing here tells you about people with severe intellectual disability or about other living arrangements. Only six of the eight residents approached took part, and the two who declined did so because of the activities or the time involved, so those who joined may have been the more willing group. The design researcher spent a great deal of one-to-one time with residents to build trust, and the authors say this personal attention may have made residents respond more positively to the activities than they would in a setting where staff cannot give that time. One researcher carried out most of the analysis. The MakiMove board was a prototype. The study did not measure whether it, or any of the activities, actually increased how much residents moved.
Declared interests
Funded by the Convergence, an alliance between Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, through two Convergence Health & Technology programmes (ALIVE and PROTECt ME). The authors declare no conflicts of interest. No company selling a treatment or product was involved.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that the MakiMove board or the activities tested increase physical activity. The study produced a prototype and a description of barriers and facilitators, and it never measured how much residents moved. It also describes what worked for six residents in one care home who received a lot of one-to-one attention from a researcher, which ordinary staffing may not allow.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →