Assessing Firefighter Perceptions Of Exercise As An Effective Disease Risk Reduction Strategy

Firefighters are critical to public safety; however, the nature of their occupation and lifestyle put them at an increased risk of many chronic diseases. Higher exercise and fitness levels have been shown to reduce one’s risk of many diseases. PURPOSE: Given that disease risk perceptions are key determinants for health behavior change, the purpose of this study was to explore firefighter perception of exercise as a disease risk reduction strategy. METHODS: 252 firefighters (15 women; age = 36.0 ± 8.5 yrs; height = 1.8 ± 0.1 m; weight = 94.8 ± 17.4 kg; BMI = 29.7 ± 4.8 kg/m2) from eight departments across the Southeastern region answered an open-ended question, “To the best of your knowledge, what specific illnesses or diseases, if any, are individuals at a higher risk of developing due to a lack of exercise? If none, please state N/A.” Diseases were coded into categories based on the International Classification of Diseases code book. RESULTS: Responses were categorized into one of 13 codes in addition to “other” and N/A categories. A greater percentage of firefighters indicated that a lack of exercise increases one’s risk for diseases of the circulatory system (75.4%) and endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases (53.2%), followed by neoplasms (i.e. cancer) (8.3%), diseases of the musculoskeletal system or connective tissue (7.9%), respiratory system (6.3%), and mental, behavioral or neurodevelopment disorders (5.6%). A small percentage (≤2%) of firefighters indicated other diseases (e.g. nervous system, immune). Other and N/A resulted in 2.0% and 13.1% of total responses, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of firefighters indicated that a lack of exercise increases one’s risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. However, a small percentage (≤8.3%) of firefighters indicated that a lack of exercise increases one’s risk of additional diseases, while 13% indicated no exercise-related disease risk reduction impacts. These findings highlight that the majority of firefighters (87%) were aware of the important risk reduction benefit of exercise for at least one disease. However, a small percentage of firefighters linked lack of exercise to current high-priority health concerns (e.g. cancer) within the fire service. Supported by: This work was supported by research grants from the CDC #U19OH012303 and #T42OH008673.