Health-related quality of life of older Brazilians from a physical program: a 5-year longitudinal study

The health-related quality of life (HRQoL) enables in understanding of older adult's behavior. Regular physical (PA) activity improves the HRQoL. Longitudinal intervention studies are lacking in the world, especially on the relationship between HRQoL and PA in older adults. The objective was to investigate the impact of an intervention program in the HRQoL of active older adults over a five-year period. A multi-component physical program was developed between 2014-2018 with older person from an extension project in Brazil. The sample was 94 individuals, aged 60 to 93 years old (M=70.57, SD=6.99). The instruments used sociodemographic questionnaire and MOS SF-36. For the GEE analysis, the time factor was adopted for the five years, the group factor was organized by age. The analysis showed interaction between Group and Time in some domains. From groups, there was a statistically significant in the physical functioning domain; the younger presented higher scores. The results showed that the HRQoL was maintained over the 5 years, with results indicating improvements, despite the changes associated with the aging process. This longitudinal study provided evidence of the positive impact of a multi-component physical program in HRQoL.