Copeland Jennifer L, Currie Cheryl, Walker Ali, Mason Erin, Willoughby Taura N, Amson Ashley
J Phys Act Health. 2017 May;14(5):344-352. doi: 10.1123/jpah.2016-0277. Epub 2017 Feb 7.
Providing freely accessible exercise facilities may increase physical activity at a population level. An increasingly popular strategy is outdoor fitness equipment in urban parks. Few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of this intervention in smaller cities. This study examined fitness equipment use, perceived effectiveness, and ways to increase use in a city of 100,000 people in 2015.
Two parks with fitness equipment and 4 without were directly observed. Interviews with 139 adults in active parks or living nearby were also conducted.
Only 2.7% of adult park users used the fitness equipment over 100 hours of observation across 3 seasons. In contrast, 22.3% of adults interviewed reported monthly or more use of the equipment, highlighting the limitations of self-report methods. Adults interviewed perceived the equipment as potentially beneficial and suggested strategies to increase public use, including increased advertising, the introduction of programming to teach and encourage use, improved equipment quality, and improved maintenance of the equipment and surrounding area.
In a low density city, park fitness equipment may not be an effective public health practice without additional efforts to market, introduce programming, and maintain these sites.
提供免费的健身设施可能会在人群层面增加身体活动量。一种越来越流行的策略是在城市公园设置户外健身器材。很少有研究评估这种干预措施在较小城市中的效果。本研究于2015年在一个拥有10万人口的城市中，对健身器材的使用情况、感知到的效果以及增加使用的方法进行了调查。
对两个设有健身器材的公园和四个没有健身器材的公园进行了直接观察。还对活跃公园内或附近居住的139名成年人进行了访谈。
在三个季节超过100小时的观察期内，成年公园使用者中只有2.7%使用了健身器材。相比之下，接受访谈的成年人中有22.3%报告每月或更频繁地使用该器材，这凸显了自我报告方法的局限性。接受访谈的成年人认为这些器材可能有益，并提出了增加公众使用的策略，包括增加宣传、引入教学和鼓励使用的项目、提高器材质量以及改善器材和周边区域的维护。
在低密度城市中，如果不额外努力进行市场推广、引入项目并维护这些场地，公园健身器材可能不是一种有效的公共卫生措施。
