SOAR program components
The SOAR program intervention is an 8-week, physiotherapist-led program that targets people aged 15-35 years who have had a sport-related knee injury and received formal care. All of this is conducted via videoconferencing software and starts off with a 2-hour group education session or “knee camp.” This is followed by a one-on-one assessment with a physiotherapist and setting exercise and physical activity goals for the week.
Participants then undertake their personalized exercise and physical activity programs at home and track their progress using an activity monitor. They can participate in an optional weekly group exercise class and receive weekly one-on-one physiotherapy counseling where goals can be modified and any issues participants might be experiencing solved.
According to Dr. Whittaker, “this program really aims to increase participants capacity to manage their elevated risk for osteoarthritis, and we’re doing this by also optimizing their knee muscle function and their physical activity participation.”
While the knee camp enables a therapeutic alliance to be formed between participants and their physiotherapists, the weekly group classes provide social support and an opportunity to interact with others.
“Brief action planning builds self-efficacy [and] promotes autonomous health behaviors, while goal setting and tracking provide accountability, feedback about progress, and facilitated adherence,” she said.
And finally, regular communication with a physiotherapist in the program ensures timely support to learn how to navigate obstacles and helps participants to learn how to deal with their own knee health.
Testing the feasibility of the SOAR program intervention
“Currently we are smack in the middle of our feasibility study,” Dr. Whittaker said. So far, four physiotherapists have been trained to deliver an abridged, 4-week version of the program, and 25 of a planned 30 participants have been enrolled.
Results seem promising so far. No participants have dropped out of the program to date and attendance is at 100%.
“Based on data from the first 12 participants who completed the program, we are meeting all of our ‘a priori’ program benchmarks,” Dr. Whittaker said.
“It is very early days,” she emphasized, but “we are excited to see clinically important improvements in both knee-related quality of life and perceived self-management.
“This gives us some confidence that maybe all this time that we’ve put into developing our intervention is paying off, but obviously time will tell if we’re headed in the right direction,” she said. “Perhaps in time, we may be able to look at whether or not the individuals that participated in that program have fewer symptoms of OA disease. But that will obviously take us a few years before we’ll be able to get to that point.”
Dr. Whittaker acknowledged receiving funding for the SOAR program from the Arthritis Society, the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, BC SUPPORT Unit, and the Canadian Musculoskeletal Rehab Network.