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Promoting physical activity through a psychological group intervention in cardiac rehabilitation: a randomized controlled trial

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Abstract

We examined the long-term effectiveness of a group-based psychological intervention (“MoVo-LISA”) to promote physical activity in patients with coronary heart disease. In this randomized controlled trial, N = 202 inactive patients with coronary heart disease were assigned to the control group (n = 102; treatment as usual) or the intervention group (n = 100; treatment as usual plus MoVo-LISA). Physical activity was assessed at baseline, 6 weeks (post-treatment), 6 months, and 12 months after discharge. ANCOVA for repeated measures revealed a significant interaction effect [p < .001; η 2 p = .214] indicating a large effect [d = 1.03] of the intervention on behavior change post-treatment. At 12-month follow-up, the level of physical activity in the intervention group was still 94 min per week higher than in the control group (p < .001; d = 0.57). Results of this RCT indicate that the MoVo-LISA intervention substantially improves the level of physical activity among initially inactive patients with coronary heart disease up to 1 year after the intervention.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the staff as well as the participants of the Schwarzwaldklinik who made it possible to conduct the study.

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Correspondence to Ramona Wurst.

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Ramona Wurst, Stephan Kinkel, Jiaxi Lin, Wiebke Göhner, Reinhard Fuchs declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wurst, R., Kinkel, S., Lin, J. et al. Promoting physical activity through a psychological group intervention in cardiac rehabilitation: a randomized controlled trial. J Behav Med 42, 1104–1116 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-019-00047-y

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