Kelli Koltyn and Susan Andreae recently received a UW-Madison Contemporary Social Problems Initiative Award for their project titled “Enhancing Maintenance of Standing Up and Moving more in Older Adults.”
Koltyn is a professor with the School of Education’s Department of Kinesiology, while Andreae is an assistant professor with the department.
Older adults spend most of the day in sedentary behavior, increasing their risk for chronic health conditions, functional limitations, and premature mortality. Thus, there is a need for community-based interventions that reduce sedentary behavior and get older adults moving more throughout the day.
With funding from the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources and the National Institutes of Health, Koltyn and Andreae developed and tested a “Stand Up and Move More” intervention offered as a workshop. This group, compared to the control group, had significant reductions in sedentary behavior, and improvements in physical function and quality of life.
However, for older adults to continue to experience these benefits they need to continue standing up and moving more. The intent of this next project is to examine low-cost behavioral strategies incorporated into the workshop to bolster maintenance of standing up and moving more over the long-term.