How can promotion of physical activity after stroke or transient ischemic attack work remotely? Evaluation of a digital tool to improve cardiovascular health and wellbeing

The overarching purpose is to improve secondary stroke prevention post stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA) by increasing access to physical activity through telerehabilitation.

This will be accomplished by building on a national collaboration within secondary stroke prevention and by testing a new telerehabilitation program (ENAbLE) developed in Australia.The ENAbLE program seeks to strengthen physical functioning and self-efficacy for exercise through home-based physical exercise and to equip the person with knowledge and confidence to sustain physical activity through behavior change techniques.

The program will be accessible via a recent developed mobile application which will be used to reinforce autonomy and patient-therapist partnership.We will first evaluate if a digital version of the ENAbLE program could be delivered as intended through a pilot randomized controlled trial to determine the feasibility, end-users experiences and preliminary effects in people post stroke/TIA living in urban and rural regions of Sweden.

We will thereafter perform a full-scale randomized controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of the ENAbLE program on cardiovascular health, physical activity, function, well-being and its cost-effectiveness across Sweden.This project will address the unmet need of providing accessible and sustainable support for physical activity to people post stroke or TIA to decrease the risk of stroke recurrence through adherence to physical activity.