Interventions with physical activity counseling for adults without diagnosed diseases - a systematic review

Counseling interventions have been broadly used to modify the level of physical activity in the population. The scope of this study was to conduct a systematic review on physical activity counseling interventions. Original intervention studies with physical activity counseling as an outcome were included and published between January 2010 and April 2020 in the Medline/PubMed, BVS, and Scielo databases, in English and Portuguese, with an adult population without diagnosed diseases. Methodological quality was assessed using the PEDro scale. We found 2,152 articles and after screening, eight manuscripts remained, writtem in seven countries. Regarding the evaluation of the quality of the work, the scores vary between 4/10 and 8/10 on the PEDro scale. The measures with counseling for PA, lasted one month and were effective in seven of the eight selected studies. The studies use the following forms of counseling: calls, SMS, cell phone apps, face-to-face counseling, e-mail, materials posted on websites, handouts, booklets and telegrams. The results of this review showed that counseling for PA practice increases the PA level of healthy adults, irrespective of the heterogeneity of methods.