Substantial health effect from increased physical activity – new estimates from Norway

Background
The last decades we have got increased knowledge about the health effects from physical activity (PA). Estimates of the gain from PA will be important to guide policymakers and others to prioritize PA in different sectors.

Purpose
The Norwegian Directorate of Health has in this work developed new estimates of PAs impact in disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) and life-years (LYs) in a Norwegian setting.

Methods
It is developed a Markov model to simulate physical activities effect on health. The PA level is divided into four activity groups: physical inactive, insufficiently physically active, physical active and extra physical active. The physical active group is defined to have a PA level like the global recommendations for adults of at least 150 min of moderate-intensity aerobic PA per week. The model is limited to nine conditions for which physical inactivity is shown to be a risk factor for. Death from other causes is also included. Data from Norwegian registries and Global Burden of Disease are used to inform disease incidence and mortality. We used data from meta-analysis or systematic reviews for the association between PA and the health parameters.

Results
We found that insufficiently physically active persons in a life perspective can gain 3,9(3,5-4,2) LYs and 7,7(7,1- 8,3) DALYs compared to individuals being physical inactive. Physical inactive people >60 years can gain 5.1(4.7-5.4) LYs and 9.9(9.1-10.6) DALYs if they get “physical active”.

Conclusions
Already small amounts of PA can give substantial health effects. The work shows the importance of strengthening the work to get more Norwegians to increase their PA level.

Practical implications
The work can be used in further and more precise cost-benefit analyses by communities and national authorities. As a part of the work, the results are integrating in a digital calculator.

Funding
The Ministry of Health and Care Services