EULAR—The European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology—has recommendations aimed at promoting health-enhancing physical activity, but despite the established benefits—and evidence supporting the efficacy of physical activity and exercise interventions in enhancing overall fitness, alleviating symptoms, improving quality of life, and positively impacting cardio-metabolic biomarkers—there are challenges, and a general gap between research findings and their implementation in real-world clinical settings. An HPR abstract session at the 2024 EULAR congress looked specifically at harnessing the benefits of exercise in rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMD)—and the challenges to their practical implementation. Mohamed Saadi presented a systematic review examining barriers and facilitators affecting adherence to EULAR's physical activity recommendations.
Across 68 selected articles, 29 different themes were identified—9 of which were social, 16 environmental, and 4 systemic. The five most-frequently-found themes were having supportive family and friends and a supportive health professional, followed by costs, and access or proximity to adapted and supervised programs. Importantly, there may be country-level differences in these three key factors.
Social considerations include the level of support available, as well as whether people feel social pressure or body shaming, and whether they have social physical activity built into their everyday lives—such as w.
