Engaging African American Older Adults With Arthritis in a Physical Activity Intervention

Physical activity like walking is one important way to reduce pain and improve wellbeing for older adults with knee and hip arthritis, but most older adults and particularly those who identify as African American struggle to walk regularly. Many African Americans with arthritis have worse outcomes (like worse pain, worse overall health) than other racial and ethnic groups for many reasons including racist policies and ideas that make getting good health care more difficult. It is therefore most important to identify ways to help older adults who identify as African American improve their arthritis pain and improve their daily steps. The current study is designed to learn about older African American's preferences for a brief behavioral intervention to increase daily steps and reduce pain, and to learn about the barriers (things that make walking harder) and facilitators (things that make walking easier) for walking that they experience. Interviews with both patients and healthcare providers will provide important information that will be used to adapt an existing behavioral intervention designed to help patients increase their daily steps and reduce their arthritis pain. The final adapted intervention will be tested in a small clinical trial with older adults who identify as African American to see if it can reduce pain and increase walking over time.