• Christine Hoehner, Jesus Soares, Diana C Parra, Isabela C Ribeiro, Michael Pratt, Mario Bracco, Pedro C Hallal, and Ross C Brownson.
• Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO.
• J Phys Act Health. 2010 Jul 1;7 Suppl 2:S265-78.

BackgroundThis review assessed whether conference abstracts yield useful information on the types and effectiveness of community-based physical activity (PA) interventions in Latin America, beyond that from interventions included in a recent systematic review of peer-reviewed literature.MethodsAbstracts from 9 conferences were searched for community-based interventions to promote PA in Latin America and summarized. Three reviewers classified and screened abstracts. Evaluated interventions that were not included in the previous review were assessed.ResultsSearch of abstracts from 31 proceedings of 9 conferences identified 87 abstracts of studies on community-based interventions focused on increasing PA. Only 31 abstracts reported on studies with a control group and an outcome related to PA. Ten of these abstracts represented interventions that had not been included in the previous review of peer-reviewed literature, but the abstracts were insufficient in number or detail to make a practice recommendation for any single intervention.ConclusionsThis review highlighted the challenges and low added value of including conference abstracts in a systematic review of community PA interventions in Latin America. Stronger evaluation design and execution and more published reports of evaluated interventions are needed to build an evidence base supporting interventions to increase PA in Latin America.

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