Comparing Virtual And In-person Delivery Of Functional Fitness Intervention Outcomes In Community Dwelling Seniors

Purpose: To assess functional fitness outcome differences among virtual and in-person delivery for older adults as it may help understand delivery modality effectiveness for best outcomes of functional independence. Methods: Twenty-one community dwelling seniors (Mage76; 95% female, 85% African American) completed a 12-week functional fitness intervention with eight participants with virtual delivery and thirteen in-person. Pre and post assessments of the Senior fitness test was used to assess aerobic endurance, and both strength and flexibility for upper and lower extremities. Results: Despite improvement in mean changes from pre-test to post test in all five functional fitness domains, only sit to stand testing illustrated a significance, t (18) = .637, p = .01, Cohen’s d = 3.35, illustrating significant improvement in lower extremity strength. Conclusion: Our results illustrate both delivery modalities of in-person and virtual functional fitness intervention contributed to significant improvements of lower extremity strength in addition to improvements in mean changes in aerobic capacity, upper and lower extremity flexibility, and upper body strength. Virtual delivery illustrated a slightly favorable mean change improvement in all domains except lower extremity flexibility. While program delivery modalities are both effective further research is needed to better understand why only lower extremity strength yielded significant improvement. Additionally, further studies should include a larger sample size.Michigan HealthEndowment Fund Grant R-2103-148372