Web-based interventions to promote physical activity by older adults: promising perspectives for a public health challenge

Regular physical activity is associated with a wide range of health benefits. As population
age, promotion of physical activity should specifically target older adults, an expanding
group involving potential higher health care costs in the near future. Innovative interventions
focusing on physical activity behaviors of senior adults exposed promising results, most
recently through the use of the Internet. If seniors and Internet are generally considered as
two opposite concepts, arguments in favour of bringing them together in a public health
perspective have been identified by the recent literature. Older adults are the fastest growing
group of Internet users and are more prone than younger to use it for health-related subjects.
Web-based interventions are effective in many health promotion sectors, including physical
activity. This is particularly true when interventions target the environmental determinants of
each senior citizen and are specifically designed for this population. Those early research
findings must clearly be extended, particularly regarding to the long term effects of Webbased
physical activity interventions. Solutions that will reduce the high dropout rate
recorded in the existing literature must also be considered as a priority in order to ensure the
development of this forward-looking field of research.