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FINAL_Accepted_Manuscript_Physical_Activity_and_Sickness_Absence_Literature_Review.Clean Copydoc.pdf (228 kB)

Does physical activity have an impact on sickness absence? A review

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-04-08, 15:49 authored by Neha M. Amlani, Fehmidah MunirFehmidah Munir
Increasing levels of physical activity are proven to have a positive impact on physical health and mental well-being. Physical activity is also known to influence work-related outcomes such as reducing sickness absence. Sickness absence is a major public health problem with wide economic impact on society and there may be much to gain from physical activity interventions aimed at preventing long-term sickness absence. Examining the relationship between physical activity and sickness absence is therefore important as it may provide benefits to organisations globally. This article provides a review of the evidence on the relationship between physical activity and sickness absence among employees. A search of databases (Web of Science, ScienceDirect, MEDLINE and Google Scholar) and references of published studies (from inception to 14 November 2012) were conducted to identify intervention studies and observational studies involving employees. A total of 37 studies published between 1981 and 2012 met the inclusion criteria. Evidence from the review suggests that physical activity is effective in reducing sickness absence. However, the studies highlighted a number of methodological concerns, including lack of description of the physical activity programme in intervention studies and use of self-report physical activity in observational studies. We conclude that, overall, the available evidence provides limited support that physical activity is effective in reducing sickness absence, due to the low quality of many of these studies. Future research should provide more detailed descriptions of the physical activity programme and use more reliable objective measures of physical activity such as accelerometers and fitness tests.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

SPORTS MEDICINE

Volume

44

Issue

7

Pages

887 - 907 (21)

Citation

AMLANI, N.H. and MUNIR, F., 2014. Does Physical Activity Have an Impact on Sickness Absence? A Review. SPORTS MEDICINE, 44 (7), pp. 887 - 907.

Publisher

© Springer International

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2014

Notes

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40279-014-0171-0

ISSN

0112-1642

Language

  • en