Working to Increase Stability Through Exercise (WISE)

Penn State Health

Status: Completed

Conditions: Fractures, Bone

Treatments: Behavioral: Enhanced Usual Care plus Exercise Coaching

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02714257

IRB-3576

PCS-1406-18325-EXT (Other Identifier)

Details and patient eligibility

About

The investigators propose a 36-month multi-center randomized effectiveness trial to compare the impact of an Enhanced Usual Care (Control) intervention, with Exercise Coaching (Exercise), on Fragility Fractures and Serious Fall-Related Injuries (FF/SFRI) in patients with a previous fragility fracture (FF).

The investigators will also examine the impact of the intervention on several secondary outcomes like: loneliness, physical function, and bone strength. The investigators will do this by following a Pragmatic trial design: 1) limiting exclusions to increase representativeness, 2) limiting research contacts (average 30 min/year) and 3) limiting measures to those practicable for use in usual care.

Full description

The intervention will be held in churches, community centers, and senior residential facilities. Investigators will work with the exercise sites to recruit up to 125 individuals (5 per exercise site location) to serve as the Group leaders at each site location. Group leaders will be trained on the exercises and leadership roles to help lead the group. The investigators will ask them to come at least once per week, so the time commitment is minimal.

The investigators will be recruiting 1130 patients who have suffered a fragility fracture and will randomly assign them to one of two conditions: (A) Control Group - Enhanced Usual Care and (B) Intervention Group - Enhanced usual care plus Exercise coaching that includes in-person and phone coach contacts to encourage and support strength, balance and walking activities.

*Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the in-person intervention was stopped in March of 2020 and a Zoom-based virtual intervention was introduced in April of 2020. Participants that join the zoom-based virtual intervention are lead by staffed exercise coaches.

Enrollment: 1,139 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 65+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• ≥ 65 years old
• Previous Fragility Fracture (FF) in past 10 years.
• Able to speak and understand English.
• Participants will need to be willing to try exercising and agree to annual follow-up measurements.

Exclusion criteria

If the answer to the following questions are "yes", the investigators will exclude the participant from the study Do you feel pain in your chest, neck, jaw, or arms at rest, during your daily activities of living, OR when you do physical activity? Have you ever been told by a health professional that you should not exercise OR exercise only when supervised by a professional?

If the answer to the following questions are "yes", the investigators will contact physician for permission Do you experience unpleasant awareness of a forceful or rapid heart rate? Do you experience unreasonable breathlessness? Do you experience dizziness fainting or blackouts? Do you experience ankle swelling? Do you have burning or cramping sensation on your lower legs when walking short distances? Do you have diabetes?

Has a doctor, nurse or health professional ever told you that you had any of the following? Weak or failing kidneys? A heart attack, also called a myocardial infarction? Angina or coronary heart disease? A stroke? Any kind of heart condition or heart disease other than the ones I just asked about?

Unable to obtain primary care provider consent (if required based on questions above)

If the participant answer "NO" to the following question: Is it ok if the investigators contact your primary care provider?

If the participant answer "YES" to the following question:Have you been hospitalized for psychiatric problem in past year?

If the participant is planning on moving out of the area in the next 36 months

If currently participates in the Band Together exercise program

Positive Callahan cognition screener: If participant fails 2 questions, research coordinator will explain study in detail and ask read-back questions. The participant will be excluded if failed read-back.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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1,139 participants in 2 patient groups

Enhanced Usual Care - control group

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants will receive enhanced usual care by reviewing three printed pamphlets on fall risks and recommendation to exercise. In addition, to maximize patient safety, the investigators will communicate the baseline bone density results (measured by Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, DXA) to the patient's primary care provider, and any critical values of a baseline measure.

Enhanced Usual Care plus Exercise Coaching Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will receive the three printed pamphlets on fall risks and exercising in groups (same as the controls) plus: (1) an exercise program that includes strength, balance, and aerobic exercises; (2) an exercise coach that provides in-person and telephone support/feedbacks to enhance participation in the exercise program; and (3) regular progress reports sent by coaches by fax/Electronic Health Records every 4 months, to communicate the patient's progress.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Enhanced Usual Care plus Exercise Coaching