Exercise counseling in health promotion

Despite the clear health benefits that can be attained through adopting a more active lifestyle, most adults in industrial nations remain underactive. Faced with this epidemic, there is a growing need for physical activity interventions that can be widely disseminated to all segments of the population across the life span. One promising avenue of physical activity counseling and support lies with primary care physicians and other health care professionals. The strengths of incorporating physical activity advice and support as part of routine healthcare include the ability to reach a substantial portion of the population repeatedly over time, the consistency and continuity of message content and delivery, and the willingness of patients to act on their physicians’ advice. Despite these strengths, however, many barriers to physical activity counseling in primary care have been documented, including lack of time, reimbursement, and training in counseling physical activity or behavior change. Although such barriers present continuing challenges to the health promotion and healthcare fields, the possible public health effects that primary care settings can have on health effects that primary care settings can have on health behavior change, including physical activity, merit continued investigation.