Implementation of physical activity interventions for people with inflammatory arthritis: an overview and future recommendations

Regular physical activity is important for both physical and mental health. This is particularly important for people with inflammatory arthritis, because of the benefits on both disease-specific and systemic outcomes and the increased risk of comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease. Despite a wealth of evidence supporting physical activity interventions, there remains a significant gap in implementation into routine care. This overview describes what implementation is, examines why it is important to consider implementation approaches to improve uptake of physical activity, highlights factors that influence successful implementation using exemplars from both osteoarthritis and inflammatory arthritis and recommends where future research is needed. Lay Summary Regular physical activity is important for physical and mental health in people with arthritis. Physical activity may help arthritis symptoms and reduce the chances of developing other conditions such as heart disease. However, physical activity is not routinely recommended to all. Physical activity programs are not offered to everyone with arthritis who may benefit. This is called an implementation gap. This overview describes what implementation is and how it can be used to improve physical activity uptake. We report examples of successful physical activity implementation for arthritis and recommend where more research is needed.