OBJECTIVES: Regular physical activity (PA) has been shown to help prevent several non-communicable diseases, improve overall health and increase quality of life (QoL). To guide policymakers in prioritization of strategies that efficiently improve public health using scarce resources, there is a need to quantify the impact of PA on the disease burden. Consequently, we aimed to estimate this impact in terms of life-years (LYs) and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) gained in Norwegian settings.

METHODS: We developed a Markov model to simulate four activity groups: inactive, partially active, active, and highly active. Our model considered nine conditions for which physical inactivity has been proven to be a risk factor, including diabetes type 2, acute myocardial infarction, stroke, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, depression, dementia, fall, and low back pain, and death due to other causes. We used data from Norwegian registries and Global Burden of Disease to inform disease incidence and mortality. We performed comprehensive literature searches to identify the high-quality evidence for the association between PA and the included diseases and mortality. Parameter uncertainty was handled with probabilistic and sensitivity analyses.

RESULTS: We found that physically active individuals can gain 5.43 (5.05-5.82) LYs and 10.41 (9.67-11.19) DALYs compared to those being inactive. Adults age >50 can benefit substantially from PA by gaining 5.19 (4.81-5.57) LYs and 9.94 (9.24-10.74) DALYs. Further, approximately 70% of the benefit obtained by the active group could be achieved by being partially active. Being highly active would decrease the disease burden by additional 17% compared to being active.

CONCLUSIONS: Meeting the national PA recommendations for being physically active has a great potential to decrease the disease burden by improving the overall health and QoL. Our findings can be used by national and regional policymakers in cost-benefit analyses to identify most efficient strategies to improve public health in Norway.