Programa de Fomento a la Actividad Física y Deportiva para la Salud en la Población de Funcionarios y Profesores en una Universidad Privada en el Caribe Colombiano: Una Experiencia de Reactivación Postpandemia

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic affected individual and social spheres, studies indicate that the increase in working flow and restrictions on social interaction imposed by isolation, affected the health of university communities; Consequently, post-pandemic reactivation must include both contagion prevention and health promotion components. In this context, this work exposes a study about design, implementation, and evaluation of a program for promotion of physical activity and sports practice at the Simón Bolívar University. With a mixed approach, the population was characterized from physical activity and health variables, finding that 58.4% did not perform physical activity according to parameters suggested for the age group and the 73.0% did not practice sports, tastes and preferences were also identified in terms of physical activity, sports and recreation, participatory methodologies were applied to design the program, which was subject to short-term evaluation of its effects on psychosocial well-being and quality of the services offered. The findings reinforce the positive relation between physical activity and physical and mental health, the linked subjects reached levels of psychosocial well-being 4 percentage points above the mean in the control groups, with results close to the expected value in the subcategories of positive relationships, life purpose, social contribution, and social coherence. The article collects learning and the path to follow increasing the effectiveness of this type of intervention.