# Cost-effectiveness of support for health professionals to implement physical activity promotion: a protocol for within-trial and modelled economic evaluations of the PROMOTE-PA effectiveness-implementation hybrid trial

## TL;DR

This study evaluates the cost-effectiveness of health professionals promoting physical activity to improve patient outcomes and guide future implementation.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a novel hybrid trial and economic evaluation protocol to assess physical activity promotion by health professionals.

## Key findings

- The study will use a 6-month within-trial and 2-year modelled analysis to evaluate cost-effectiveness.
- Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios and quality-adjusted life years will be analyzed.
- Results will be visualized using a cost-effectiveness plane and acceptability curve.

## Abstract

Physical activity has important benefits for the prevention and management of chronic diseases and healthy ageing. Health professionals have valuable opportunities to promote physical activity to a large group of people across the lifespan. Promotion of Physical Activity by Health Professionals is a hybrid type 1 effectiveness-implementation cluster randomised trial designed to evaluate the impact of physical activity promotion by health professionals (n=30 clusters) on physical activity participation in their patients (n=720). To inform the future implementation of this programme, we will be conducting a within-trial and modelled economic evaluation.

We will conduct a cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analysis from the perspective of the healthcare, aged care and disability funder. The time horizon will be 6 months for the within-trial analysis and 2 years for the modelled analysis. Data on intervention costs will be collected using trial records. Data on healthcare utilisation will be collected using data linkage. Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) will be reported for physical activity and quality-adjusted life years outcomes. Bootstrapping will be used to explore uncertainty around the ICERs and estimate 95% CIs. Results will be presented on a cost-effectiveness plane. The probability that the intervention would be cost-effective at varying willingness-to-pay thresholds will be presented using a cost-effectiveness acceptability curve.

Ethics approval was obtained through Sydney Local Health District (RPAH zone) Ethics Review Committee (X23-0197). The findings of this study will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journal articles and conference presentations.

Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12623000920695.