About the Webinar
This virtual symposium on physical activity research is a part of the Office of Disease Prevention’s Prevention in Focus webinar series. The overarching goal of this symposium is to examine the current evidence, emerging research priorities, and gaps in understanding the role of physical activity in chronic disease prevention and management. This virtual webinar highlights the work of early-stage and junior NIH-funded investigators whose research reflects evolving priorities in the field.
The symposium explores strategies to increase and sustain physical activity through habit formation, practical exercise interventions, and environmental and population-based approaches that support active living.
The learning objectives for this symposium include:
- Describe behavioral, biological, and environmental factors that influence physical activity participation and adherence across the lifespan;
- Present emerging evidence on strategies to promote and sustain physical activity, including targeted exercise interventions, and molecular mechanisms underlying exercise benefits; and
- Identify opportunities to apply individual-, community-, and population-based approaches to support active living, improve health outcomes, and prevent chronic disease.
This symposium is co-sponsored by the Office of Disease Prevention Physical Activity Scientific Interest Group (SIG) and NHLBI’s Obesity Research Task Force (ORTF).
Presentation Abstracts
Leveraging Daily Contexts to Promote Physical Activity Habits and Healthy Aging
Speaker: Jaclyn P. Maher, Ph.D.
Sustaining physical activity remains a major challenge for many older adults. This presentation describes a research program focused on understanding how daily contexts influence habit formation and long-term physical activity behavior. Drawing on ecological momentary assessment studies, findings will be presented on the role of stable physical, social, temporal, and affective contexts in supporting physical activity habits. The presentation will also discuss a planned Stage 1 intervention that examines action-planning strategies designed to strengthen habit formation among insufficiently active older adults. This work aims to identify scalable behavioral mechanisms that can be targeted to promote lasting physical activity engagement and support healthy aging.
Exercise Snacks: Bite-Sized Breaks for Better Health
Speaker: Marily Oppezzo, Ph.D., M.S., RDN, DipACLM
Exercise remains one of the most effective strategies for disease prevention, yet many people struggle to meet recommended physical activity guidelines. Novel approaches, such as “exercise snacks”—short, manageable bouts of activity performed throughout the day—offer a practical way to accumulate meaningful health benefits in everyday life and workplace settings. Findings from our pilot study suggest that promoting lifelong strength training requires different motivational and behavioral approaches than increasing cardiovascular activity. Strength training presents unique challenges to sustained participation, particularly when delivered remotely, highlighting the need for targeted behavior-change strategies that support long-term adoption.
Perimenopause has emerged as an important focus for exercise research. This life stage presents unique physiological and behavioral challenges that are often overlooked, despite being recognized by the NIH as a critical window for primary prevention, especially for women. Our pilot promoting strength training during perimenopause identified opportunities to better tailor interventions to this population while addressing widespread misinformation that often encourages expensive, unproven solutions. Further research is needed to improve methods for measuring strength-training behaviors—moving beyond step counts to better capture resistance exercise—and develop interventions that combine evidence-based education with effective behavior change strategies.
Mapping Exercise from Tissue to Molecules to Space: Fat as the Lens
Speaker: Cheehoon Ahn, Ph.D.
Physical activity is among the most powerful modulators of human health, yet how it exerts its benefits at the tissue and molecular level remains incompletely understood. This presentation uses fat tissue as a lens for exploring that question at increasing resolution. This presentation will discuss how exercise remodels fat tissue to improve its structure and function, drawing on human studies linking physical activity to healthier adipose biology. This presentation will describe how the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC) is building a large-scale molecular map of exercise, using multi-omic profiling to capture the coordinated molecular response to physical activity across the organs, including fat tissue. Finally, this presentation will introduce spatial and single-cell technologies as a new dimension for this mapping effort — allowing us to resolve not just what changes with exercise, but where those changes occur within tissue. Attendees will come away with an example of how exercise science, multi-omics, and emerging cutting-edge technologies can be integrated to deepen our understanding of how physical activity promotes human health.
Do Healthy Neighborhoods Occur by Chance or Design? Sustainable Opportunities for Active Living
Speaker: Natalicio Serrano, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Promoting active living behaviors can provide opportunities to meet physical activity guidelines and improve overall health. Community design, transportation systems, and how neighborhoods are shaped greatly influence active living. Certain environmental and policy strategies, such as neighborhood development investment and zoning policy, can help create neighborhoods that support active living. However, little evidence exists highlighting the links between investment and policy opportunities and active living, creating challenges for implementing such strategies due to the complexities of interrelated factors and sectors (e.g., planning, transportation, housing). This presentation will highlight the impacts of neighborhood development, as well as zoning policies in the United States. Further, this webinar will explore participatory systems science strategies to better understand the implementation of neighborhood development for active living. The goals of this presentation are to: (1) help identify environment and policy levers that are beneficial for active living and neighborhood development, and (2) provide evidence for community members to advocate for land use and development policies that are beneficial for the health and well-being of all community members.