Effectiveness of Interventions to Increase Physical Activity Among Minority Populations: An Umbrella Review

Purpose: Numerous interventions have been tested to increase physical activity (PA) among minority adults, and several review papers have examined the results from these studies. The primary purpose of this umbrella review is to summarize evidence from existing reviews regarding effectiveness of PA interventions in minority populations. Procedures: Searches were conducted in five electronic databases to identify English-language articles reviewing the effects of interventions to increase PA in minority adults living in the United States. Reviews that met the inclusion criteria were critically assessed using umbrella review procedures. Review quality was assessed using the PRISMA statement and checklist. Findings: Twenty-two reviews fulfilled inclusion criteria. The sample included one meta-analysis, 11 integrated reviews, and 10 narrative reviews published between 1998 and 2012. The reviews documented modest improvements in PA with considerable variation in intervention effectiveness across primary studies. Integrative reviews generally were of higher overall quality than narrative reviews with regard to fulfilling PRISMA criteria. Conclusions: Integrated and narrative reviews were unable to validly determine the characteristics of effective interventions. Future reviews should employ meta-analytic methods in order to quantitatively identify those intervention characteristics that are most likely to increase PA behavior in minority adults.