Are Australian immigrants at a risk of being physically inactive?

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity

Research

Shyamali C Dharmage¹  Lyle Gurrin¹  Jayantha Dassanayake²  Vijaya Sundararajan³  Warren R Payne⁴ 

[1] Center for Molecular, Environment, Genetic and Analytical Epidemiology, The University of Melbourne, Australia;Center for Molecular, Environment, Genetic and Analytical Epidemiology, The University of Melbourne, Australia;Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living, Victoria University, Australia;Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta, Canada;Department of Medicine, Southern Clinical School, Monash University, Australia;Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living, Victoria University, Australia;

关键词: Physical Activity;    Host Country;    Leisure Time;    Physical Inactivity;    Middle East;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1479-5868-8-53

 received in 2010-10-15, accepted in 2011-06-01,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundWe examined whether physical activity risk differed between migrant sub-groups and the Australian-born population.MethodsData were drawn from the Australian National Health Survey (2001) and each resident's country of birth was classified into one of 13 regions. Data were gathered on each resident's physical activity level in the fortnight preceding the survey. Multivariable logistic regression, adjusted for potential confounders examined the risk of physical inactivity of participants from each of the 13 regions compared to the Australian-born population.ResultsThere was a greater prevalence of physical inactivity for female immigrants from most regions compared to male immigrants from a like region. Immigrants from South East Asia (OR 2.04% 95% CI 1.63, 2.56), Other Asia (OR 1.53 95% CI 1.10, 2.13), Other Oceania (1.81 95% CI 1.11, 2.95), the Middle East (OR 1.42 95% CI 0.97, 2.06 [note: border line significance]) and Southern & Eastern Europe are at a significantly higher risk of being physically inactive compared to those born in Australian. In contrast, immigrants from New Zealand (OR 0.77 95% CI 0.62, 0.94), the UK & Ireland (OR 0.82 95% CI 0.73, 0.92), and other Africa (OR 0.69 95% CI 0.51, 0.94) are at a significantly lower risk of being physically inactive compared to the Australian born population.ConclusionFuture research identifying potential barriers and facilitators to participation in physical activity will inform culturally sensitive physical activity programs that aim to encourage members of specific regional ethnic sub-groups to undertake physical activity.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Dassanayake et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.