Co-designing exercise promotion for MS healthcare professionals

We have known for years that exercise is beneficial for people with MS, yet most people with MS do not do enough exercise to experience these benefits.

Associate Professor Yvonne Learmonth and her team have found that people with MS, living in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia, would like to go to their doctors and nurses and discuss exercise, receive correct and consistent exercise information and receive tools or referrals to exercise specialists. They also found that doctors and nurses involved in MS care want to promote exercise to their patients, but they lacked the knowledge, strategies, resources and confidence to do this.

Associate Professor Learmonth and her team will listen to people with MS, and to doctors and nurses involved in MS care, to co-design an intervention and toolkit for MS healthcare providers to promote exercise to people with MS. They will ensure the intervention is based on established theory and principles so that it will resonate with people with MS. This approach will help people with MS achieve their exercise goals, learn skills to monitor their progress, feel good about mastering exercise and identify strategies to overcome barriers to incorporate exercise into their lives.

The team will design and test their intervention to ensure it can be implemented by doctors and nurses across MS care. At the end of the project, they will assess the ability of doctors and nurses to promote exercise and what impact this has on exercise behaviour in people with MS.