UNDERSTANDING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMMUNITY FACTORS AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY LEVELS IN INDIVIDUALS LIVING WITH HEART DISEASE NOT ATTENDING CARDIAC REHABILITATION PROGRAMS

Abstract

Background: Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a leading cause of death in Canada; however, physical activity (PA) has been shown to reduce mortality. Unfortunately, CHD patients are not engaging in enough PA. Purpose: To explore the association of the environmental variables (a) rurality, (b) access to PA opportunities, and (c) community socio-economic status (SES) with PA in CHD patients 3 months after discharge? And how does task self-efficacy may mediate these associations Results: Regressions showed that task self-efficacy predicted PA; however rurality, and SES did not predict PA at 3 months, nor did access to PA opportunities with the exclusion of pools. The lack of associations required no mediational analyses to be performed, except for pools, which demonstrated no mediational influence from self-efficacy. Conclusion: While task self-efficacy was a key PA correlate, there were no associations between the environment and PA (with the exclusion of access to pools).