LET'S TAKE AN HEALTHY WALK in the PARK

ABSTRACT

Background: Patients with RMDs are not yet used to live phisical activity such as an important part of their therapy;Covid 19 pandemic, with the restrictions imposed on interpersonal approaches and the the fear of being infected and spreading the virus, has further slowed down the way towards these kind of empowerment. During the pandemic, in Italy the number of pets (mainly dogs) had an exponen-cial increase. Animal Assisted Interventions/Animal Assisted Therapies seems to be really successful. Objectives: Our project aims: to offer people with RMDs the opportunity to move playing ftwalking under control of WALKin trainers who can teach them the right way to practice this new discipline or simply walking properly with their dogs or playng rehabilitative exercises (specifc for each one) with the help of animals specially trained. a number of meetings (at least 12) in which experts will discuss about RMDs, comorbidities, nature, animals, man-animal relationship adn so on. Methods: Thanks to an agreement with a natural park (UNESCO MAB Collina Po reserve), we could draw 4 different routes (3-4-5-7 Km) and a safe area in which all the participants can play different activities. Based on the medical prescription, people will be assigned to different groups (no more than 7 people in each group) and to different activities (walking, rehabilitative exercises, alone or with animals). Twice a week during an hour the groups will meet and practice their activity, not only working together, but also sharing experiences, sesations, feeling. Each group will be lead by an expert (walking trainers, health pofessionals, teamsters). Either each group leader or each participant will wright a diary at the end of the activity session, to let us have a number of encoded informations which drive us to verify all progresses in term of improvement of mobility and mood and reduction of drugs cosumption. Results: The participation (face to face and virtual) in the frst three meetings (October, November 2021 and January 2022 has been continuously increasing and we have a good core of 'fans', but also every time a lot of new people who want to join us. We are collecting the frst inscriptions and we preview to start the activity on March 20 when the frst goups will be leaded by Maurizio Damilano, twice world and Olympic running champion and inventor of ftwalking. First preliminary results will be available in December 2022. Conclusion: With this project we hope to help people with RMDs to live physical activity as an important part of their therapeutic pathway and to rediscover how nice it is to be together, fnding new friends (either humans or animals).