Physical Activity for Life for Seniors (PALS)
Lead Researcher: Kimberlee Gretebeck, PhD, RN; School of Nursing UW-Madison
What is the focus of your research?
Health promotion interventions to improve health and physical activity in older adults.
How has stakeholder engagement helped your project so far?
We brought both our recruitment and training materials to the CARDS. We also worked with a community advisory board (CAB) in Milwaukee. We got great feedback from these groups about many aspects of our program, including who should deliver the interventions! We’d planned on using professional health educators, but they strongly preferred using community peers as the exercise group leaders. After talking to these stakeholders, we also moved the intervention in Milwaukee to take place in a housing complex. I’m so glad I listened to them. We had a 100% success rate in Milwaukee: 23 people with no drop-outs for eight and a half months!
What is a lesson you’ve learned from your stakeholder engagement work?
Listen to them and do what they say! I attribute all of this success to them—no question!
Services provided by WINRS to the research team:
- Several CARDS meetings to review study recruitment materials and training materials