Access to exercise for people with long-term health conditions
Exercise offers many physical and mental health benefits. However, Healthwatch Barnet regularly receives feedback from people with long-term health conditions about the challenges they face in relation to physical activity and exercise.
To find out what would help, we surveyed 113 people in Barnet and conducted in-depth interviews with 12 of them. Our recommendations can be found on page 7 of our report.
Our report sets out the good practice that we found. It also outlines changes which could be made to ensure that long-term health conditions do not prevent people from taking part in physical activity. This approach is in line with the Social Model of Disability, which was developed by Disabled people and describes people as being disabled by barriers in society, rather than by an impairment or health condition.
What helped and hindered people exercising?
In our survey, when people reported barriers and enablers to exercise, they could choose as many options as they wished from a multiple-choice menu.
- Physical health: when we asked about barriers to exercise, 63% (n=56) of survey respondents either selected ‘my physical health issues limit exercise’ or selected ‘other’ and described barriers related to physical ill-health. There is clear scope to increase accessibility to ensure that these physical health issues do not prevent people from exercising.
- Access to healthcare: when asked what would encourage them to exercise, 35% (n=31) people chose advice from a GP or health professional.
- Cost: 52% (n=59) of respondents had no disposable income; 23% (n=26) had small amounts of disposable income. Unsurprisingly, several interviewees identified cost as a barrier to, for example, joining a gym.
- Wellbeing and connection: some people said support from friends or family helped them to exercise; others described the negative effect of social isolation. In qualitative feedback, access to collective exercise emerged as a major factor in relation to people’s engagement with physical activity.
- Outdoor spaces: many interviewees expressed their appreciation of Barnet’s green spaces. Key areas for development were the availability of toilets in public spaces and online information about outdoor gyms.
- Support from GPs:
- In our survey, we asked what support people wanted from healthcare professionals in relation to exercise. The most popular response was ‘personal advice – safe and sensible activities given my health situation’, followed by ‘information – local options for activities’.
- In qualitative feedback, while several interviewees shared positive experiences with their GP surgery, only one out of 12 interviewees said they had received personalised exercise guidance. None of our interviewees reported being signposted to local exercise opportunities.
