PERCEIVED EXERCISE BENEFITS AND BARRIERS FOR OLDER ADULTS ATTENDING COMMUNITY CENTERS IN SOUTH FLORIDA. Neva J. Kirk-Sanchez*; Sarah Gruen; Annabelle Jorge; Haronyd Melo; Anabel Nunez; Susan Salinas Physical Therapy, Florida International University, Miami, FL PURPOSE: The Centers for Disease Control recommend that older adults exercise at least 30 minutes 5 times per week in order to improve health. Many older adults are unsuccessful at achieving this recommendation. The purpose of this study was to examine exercise habits and perceived benefits and barriers to exercise in older adults attending South Florida senior center meal sites. BACKGROUNDS/SIGNIFICANCE: Learning more about exercise behaviors of older adults is important in order to develop interventions and wellness programs to target perceived barriers. Senior center meal sites may be a good venue for addressing some of these barriers. SUBJECTS: Subjects were 52 older adults with a mean age of 77.2 years (s.d. 8.6) attending 3 senior center meal sites in South Florida. Subjects were 16% male and had a mean of 2.3 (s.d. 1.6) medical conditions. Subjects were 38% white non-Hispanic, 21% Hispanic/Latino, and 40% Black/African-American. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Subjects completed surveys addressing barriers and benefits to exercise, minutes per week they exercise, and days per week they exercise. ANALYSES: Descriptive statistics were used to determine the average amount of exercise subjects performed. The frequency of responses for each question was determined. Data was analyzed using SAS 9.0. RESULTS: Subjects performed a mean of 211 minutes per week of exercise (s.d. 200), but 12% reported that they did not do any exercise, and 44% were performing less than the 150 minutes per week recommended by the CDC. Subjects performed exercises an average of 4.22 days per week (s.d. 2.1). The most commonly reported barriers to exercise were: exercise is difficult, too tired to exercise, lack of family/spouse encouragement to exercise, lack of time to exercise, and poor access to exercise facilities. In general, most subjects agreed with statements describing the benefits of exercise. CONCLUSIONS: In this group of older adults attending senior center meal sites in South Florida, many subjects were performing less than the recommended amount of exercise per week. Poor adherence to exercise recommendations may be due to perceived barriers to exercise. The most common barriers to exercise dealt with the perception that exercise was difficult or fatiguing, that people lacked the time to exercise, that exercise facilities were inadequate, and that people lack social support for exercise. These barriers are consistent with those of other studies described in the literature. Senior center meal sites may be a good venue for addressing some of these barriers by increasing social support for exercise, providing access to exercise programs and facilities, and facilitating healthy exercise behaviors in older adults. FUNDING SOURCE: N/A KEYWORDS: older adults, health promotion, exercise behaviors Copyright 2009 by the American Physical Therapy Association. Requests for reprints should be directed to the corresponding author of the article. Educators, students, and other academic customers may receive permission to reprint copyrighted material from Physical Therapy (ISSN 1538-6724) by contacting the Copyright Clearance Center Inc, 222 Rosewood Dr, Danvers, MA 01923. Other types of customers who want permission to reprint should contact the APTA Editorial Office, Attn: Physical Therapy.