Tech and hypokinetic disease

8-8-12: Another interesting Medscape article on how tech, media, and communications can play a part in fighting hypokinetic diz.

The implications of megatrends in information and communication technology and transportation for changes in global physical activity.

Lancet.  2012; 380(9838):282-93 (ISSN: 1474-547X)

Pratt M; Sarmiento OL; Montes F; Ogilvie D; Marcus BH; Perez LG; Brownson RC;
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA. mpratt@cdc.gov

Physical inactivity accounts for more than 3 million deaths per year, most from non-communicable diseases in low-income and middle-income countries. We used reviews of physical activity interventions and a simulation model to examine how megatrends in information and communication technology and transportation directly and indirectly aff ect levels of physical activity across countries of low, middle, and high income.

The model suggested that the direct and potentiating effects of information and communication technology, especially mobile phones, are nearly equal in magnitude to the mean effects of planned physical activity interventions. The greatest potential to increase population physical activity might thus be in creation of synergistic policies in sectors outside health including communication and transportation.

However, there remains a glaring mismatch between where studies on physical activity interventions are undertaken and where the potential lies in low-income and middle-income countries for population-level effects that will truly affect global health.