Academias ao ar livre no Brasil como política de promoção da saúde de idosos: caso das Academias da Terceira Idade na Cidade do Rio de Janeiro (2009-2019).

Abstract

Introduction: Senior Citizens' Gyms (ATI) are spaces with equipment similar to those of a conventional weight training gym adapted to be outdoors whose proposal is to offer free and easy access to physical exercise for adults and the elderly. The municipality of Rio de Janeiro implemented its first unit, in 2009, three years after the first was inaugurated, in Brazil, in Maringá, specifically. However, little is known about how this implementation took place, what goals were achieved, why the choice of certain neighborhoods to receive an ATI and devices are different from other locations, and why the only ATI installed on a campus university in the country have been closed, even though the objective was to make it a model academy that would serve as a field of scientific investigation for researchers from different areas. Objective: To investigate the history and discuss the process of implementation of ATI, in Brazil, in particular, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Methodology: This is a historical research with the use of written sources, such as: literature review, articles published by television and internet stations, digitalized journalistic articles and made available by the Acervo O Globo website, public archives such as Official Diaries and sources oral. The present-time approach was chosen to help understand the process of implementing and continuing the ITAs in the city of Rio de Janeiro, based on the narrative of four people who participated in this process, from 2009 to 2020. The interviews were conducted between 2017 and 2020, through a questionnaire and meeting held on the Zoom Meetings virtual platform. After conducting all the interviews, the transcription was performed using YouTube and the service offered by Logus Academy and reviewed , manually , or with the help of the “otranscribe.com” website . Results: ATI arose from models copied from China, which inaugurated the equipment at the time of the Beijing Olympic Games. In Brazil, the devices were built by trial and error. In Maringá, the choice of neighborhoods for the installation of ITAs was based on the number of elderly people in the region. In Rio, there are no records of the survey study, but the first ATI was in Copacabana, the neighborhood with the largest number of long-lived elderly in the city. Over time, ATI became part of a larger project, Rio Ar Livre (RAL), which brought together other programs offering free physical exercise to the elderly. An ATI, known as RAL / UERJ, was installed on the campus of this University, but closed by the Public Prosecutor's Office. In the beginning, the city's ATI offered classes guided by Physical Education teachers with the support of Nursing technicians and administrative assistants. Over time, the teams were discharged, the ITAs disappeared and, today, little is known of how many still exist in the city, how many people are served and the impact of the exercises on the users' health. There is a study, however, talking about the negative impact of closing RAL / UERJ on the lives of the elderly who participated. Conclusion: As a public policy, ITAs are an adequate option to promote the health of the elderly, through the practice of physical exercises, as long as there is an adequate management, without termination of activities, either due to lack of payment by employees, or due to lack of maintenance equipment, either because there are no studies on the impacts on users' health. Results-oriented management and transparency and accessibility in the dissemination of information related to ITA are suggested.