South Asian Mothers Being Active (SAMBA)

South Asian Mother's Becoming Active (SAMBA) is a culturally-sensitive and collaboratively-designed intervention to support South Asian women to become more physically active. The intervention was developed through community-based participatory research, which included focus group discussions and individual interviews with women from the South Asian community. The aim of the intervention is to implement and evaluate a pilot, single-blinded randomized controlled trial with an experimental group of 30 South Asian women, and a delayed matched-control group, at two community settings in metropolitan Perth. Women from the Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepali and Bhutanese communities will be recruited to take part. We will assess changes in levels of objectively-measured physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and BMI; and psychological well being. Participants can self-select the level of intensity in which they engage with the physical activities included in the trial (i.e., there is not a 'target' level of intensity to be achieved). Participants will attend one 90-minute session every week for 10 weeks. The sessions will be held at local community centers. Each session will include a ‘classroom style’ educational component (approximately 45 minutes), and a physical activity component (approximately 45 minutes). The physical activity component of the intervention will include various forms of dance, aerobics, yoga and movement. The activities will be designed to suit the fitness levels of the women. Participants will be able to self-select physical activity tasks based on their perceived fitness levels (i.e., there will be no fitness tests for this pragmatic community trial). Physical activity sessions will be led by two female, community facilitators who are appropriately trained to lead such activities. Weekly physical activity sessions will be planned collaboratively by the Curtin University research staff and the community facilitators. Prior to delivering the program, the community facilitators will receive training in motivationally-supportive communication style. The training will involve two face-to-face training sessions, each of 2-hours duration. The training will be facilitated by Curtin University research staff, with expertise in training tutors to deliver health programs in community settings. Principles from contemporary theories of motivation, such as Self-Determination Theory, will be utilised in the training. For example, the community facilitators will be trained to use strategies such as acknowledging feelings, offering choice and appropriate explanations, involving the participants in the decision-making process, and promoting feelings of competence in behaviour change that are based on personal progression rather than comparison with others. The community facilitators will then be provided opportunities to practice session delivery and receive feedback. The community facilitators will also have access to supporting resources relating to motivationally-supportive communication style. These resources have been developed by the research team for application in this and other motivationally-supportive physical activity programs. The educational component of the intervention will be delivered by Curtin University research staff, with qualifications in Public Health, Psychology, and Education. The content will be delivered face-to-face, and additional supporting resources will be supplied to participants, including hard copy and electronic resources. The aims of the educational sessions will be to introduce some key, empirically-derived, behaviour-change techniques. Specifically, topics will include: • The health benefits of performing regular physical activity and minimising prolonged sedentary behaviour. • The Australian Government recommendations in relation to physical activity and sedentary behaviour for adults. • How to plan physical activity to suit your lifestyle. • Practical tips for incorporating physical activity into everyday life (e.g., taking the stairs rather than the lift when possible). • Overcoming barriers, problem solving, and coping with challenges that might disrupt or inhibit physical activity. • The role of motivation and how to develop more self-determined motivation to be physically active. • Strategies for setting achievable goals and the importance of revising those goals over time. • The benefits of self-monitoring physical activity performance (e.g. keeping a physical activity diary). • Strategies to develop self-efficacy for physical activity (e.g. behavioural practice/rehearsal or graded tasks). • Developing social support for physical activity (e.g., restructuring the social environment). A multi-component process evaluation (including self-administered questionnaires focus group discussions with women, interviews the physical activity community facilitators, and coded audio recordings of the facilitators’ communication style at three randomly selected program delivery sessions) will be undertaken in accordance with the Medical Research Council guidelines and other relevant evaluation frameworks. Weekly attendance records will be kept. Participants who drop out of the program will be asked to take part in structured telephone interviews which will examine their reasons for disengagement. The community facilitators will then train a group of eight volunteer women (i.e., external volunteers from community organizations) in continuing to deliver a PA program to communities. This training program will be developed based on the findings of the process evaluation, with the frequency and duration of training sessions to be determined in accordance with those findings. The intervention training package (training of the facilitators and the weekly intervention content) will be made freely available so that it can be potentially replicated with other culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The initial training program will be delivered face-to-face, with the sessions video recorded so they can be utilised in other settings in the future.