CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY INTERVENTIONS FOR PROMOTING CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH IN WOMEN

Abstract

The cultural significance of physical activity intervention studies involving under-represented communities is discussed in this work. Included were seventy-one existing studies that evaluated strategies to promote physical activity among adults from under-represented groups. After extracting verbatim accounts of initiatives to improve the cultural relevance of research designs and interventions, the content was examined. We discovered ways to improve the cultural relevance of interventions, such as asking the population for feedback, relating the intervention's content to values, addressing language and literacy issues, integrating media figures from the population, utilizing culturally appropriate physical activity, and addressing barriers to activity that are specific to a given population. Methodological strategies included cost-aware research processes to avoid financial obstacles to participation, culturally relevant measurements, under-represented staff, and specialized recruiting and study sites. Surface matching accounted for the majority of reported actions. Existing research did not address cultural, educational, geographic, or economic variation across groups, nor did it compare the efficacy of cultural relevance methods to standardized interventions.