Community Exercise chronic musculoskeletal pain for older adults – ComEx Pain
About our research:
The University of Limerick, in partnership with Chronic Pain Ireland and Limerick Sports Partnership, is running an innovative community-based research study to support older people with chronic pain to engage in exercise – Community-based exercise for older adults with chronic musculoskeletal pain: a randomised controlled feasibility trial.
Project Overview
Chronic pain affects one in three older Irish adults, and significantly negatively affects the person’s daily function and quality of life. The societal and healthcare costs of chronic pain have been estimated at €5.34 billion per year in Ireland. Physical activity is widely recommended to help manage chronic pain and improve overall health for older adults. However, that it is not always easy for older people with chronic pain to be active.
Barriers to being active include fear of how safe it is, lack of skilled support, and a lack of exercise opportunities designed with the needs of people with chronic pain in mind. These issues drove Professor Karen McCreesh from the School of Allied Health in the University of Limerick to set up the project. Prof McCreesh felt there was a gap in our knowledge on the impacts of exercise for people over 50 with chronic pain and received funding from the Health Research Board of Ireland to explore this more. Experienced physiotherapist and researcher Dr Mairéad Conneely, will be the main researcher on the project.
Project Focus
The focus of this project is to investigate the impacts of specialised exercise classes for people over 50 who live with chronic pain. The classes are held in Limerick city so the majority of participants are from the Limerick area although we do have participants from the neighbouring counties of Clare and Tipperary. This is considered a small-scale trial where we ‘randomise’ participants to either a community-based exercise class or to a control group where they will do exercise at home with the aim of an exercise guide. As this is a feasibility project, UL will use this project to see if the concept is viable and if so, it may be extended to a wider remit for a future definitive trial. As secondary outcomes the researchers will measure changes from participants’ baselines in pain, disability, physical activity level, and emotional wellbeing. We will also do focus groups with the participants and exercise trainers to get their views on the intervention and trial procedures. The lived experience of the participants and the trainers is central to the research.
Current Progress
Initially, UL provided training for community exercise trainers in supporting people with chronic pain to engage successfully in exercise. Right now UL are running two types of exercise classes with the wonderful instructors Carmel and Dolores from Limerick Sports Partnership. Carmelo teaches a specialised Yoga/Pilates class in Limerick city centre and Dolores teaches a specialised aqua aerobics classes in the warm hydrotherapy pool in St Gabriel’s Dooradoyle. The control group are doing exercise at home. We will compare the experiences of people who have done the community exercise classes with the experiences of those who did exercise at home.
Next or Future Steps
We want to see if the exercise programme is feasible and will interview participants and trainers to receive their feedback on the study interventions. If this study shows that the programme is acceptable and feasible to deliver, it can then be tested in a larger scale trial in the future, to see if it is an effective and cost-effective method of supporting people with chronic pain. The University of Limerick would look to expand the project to encompass more classes in more locations through the network of County Sports Partnerships. The implications of classes targeted for people with chronic pain could have long-term impacts in terms of health, well-being and health care requirements.
Learn More
Here is some information from the Health Research Board on our research and similar work being carried out in Ireland.
Dr Conneely has written a study protocol for the project. A study protocol gives a deep ‘dive’ into the research behind the project, how the project will run, its research aims and plans for the future. You can take a look at it here:
Community-based exercise (ComEx Pain) for older… | HRB Open Research
