UH Medical School Receives Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
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Posted: Mar 14, 2002

HONOLULU - The John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa recently received a $49,732 grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The grant will help support a one-year study by JABSOM‘s Dr. Claudio Nigg entitled "Validating the stages of change for physical activity."

The majority of past exercise-related research has investigated the determinants of exercise to predict which individuals are active or inactive at a given time, thus implying that there are only two stages of physical activity - active and inactive. It has been suggested, however, that physical activity behavior change is a multiple stage model, which has implications for the type of interventions corresponding to the appropriate stage of behavior change.

"Numerous studies have investigated the construct validity of the stages of change applied to physical activity behavior. Studies have found that stage is associated with self-reported physical activity behavior in adolescent, college, adult and older adult samples," said Nigg, assistant professor in JABSOM‘s Department of Public Health Sciences & Epidemiology. "However, only a few investigations have associated stages with measures of fitness level and objective indicators."

The purpose of Nigg‘s study is, therefore, to validate the stages of physical activity using multiple valid and reliable self-report, objective and physiological measures from numerous sites participating in the Behavior Change Consortium addressing different populations across the nation.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based in Princeton, N.J., is the nation‘s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care. It concentrates its grantmaking in four goal areas: to assure that all Americans have access to basic health care at reasonable cost; to improve care and support for people with chronic health conditions; to promote healthy communities and lifestyles; and to reduce the personal, social and economic harm caused by substance abuse - tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs.