The High Authority for Health wants to facilitate the prescription of sports on a daily basis. The health authority considers physical activity as a “treatment in its own right”.
- Before the law of March 2, 2022, the prescription of sport was reserved for long-term conditions (ALD).
- From now on, the sport on prescription will be able to concern patients suffering from arterial hypertension, obesity or depression.
In a press release published this Tuesday, September 6the High Authority for Health (HAS) recalls that physical activity “must definitely be considered as a treatment in its own right and be prescribed as such”. Indeed, according to the health body, sport would have many benefits such as reducing the risk of recurrence of certain breast cancers, slowing the risk – reduced by two – of the transition from a prediabetic state to diabetes, etc. .
Not enough prescriptions
Thus, in this press release, the HAS publishes a new prescription and consultation guide and help sheets for the prescription of physical activity broken down by pathology for doctors.
The law of March 2 aimed at democratizing sport in France extended the prescription of healthy sport to chronic illnesses or people with risk factors or loss of autonomy. Nevertheless, the HAS considers that still “many patients feel apprehensive about practicing physical activity when they are sick or elderly, while few doctors still prescribe it“.
tools for doctors
To make it easier for doctors to prescribe physical activity to patients who need it, HAS has made several tools available to them. First of all, the consultation and medical prescription guide for physical activity in adults. In it, health professionals will find information on the stages of identification of the inactive patient at risk for physical activity at the prescription, on the dispensation, as well as on the monitoring of physical activity.
Then, the HAS also publishes various informative documents such as a summary sheet of adapted physical activity with the procedures for prescribing, renewing and stopping an adapted physical activity program. A knowledge guide on physical activity and physical inactivity as well as new sheets for specific pathologies (asthma, type 1 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease) are also available. Finally, for each existing sheet by disease, a more concise one is offered to doctors.
In the coming weeks, new information booklets will also be published for doctors on other pathologies (low back pain, multiple sclerosis, overweight and obesity in children) but also for patients. These will address the benefits of physical activity for each pathology in a more accessible way.