ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Physical Activity in the Prevention and Management of Disease
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1575583
Estimation of the burden of disease averted by leisure center membership across Spain
Provisionally accepted
ALFONSO JIMENEZ1
Inés Nieto1*
Xian Mayo1
Pablo Bascones2
Jesús De Soto Cardenal2Alfonso Arroyo1Gary Liguori3Larissa Davies4- 1Rey Juan Carlos University, Móstoles, Spain
- 2PriceWaterhouseCoopers, PwC, Madrid, Spain
- 3Penn State Abington, Abington Township, Pennsylvania, United States
- 4Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, North West England, United Kingdom
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Introduction. Active behavior performed in leisure centers might help reduce the negative health impacts associated with physical inactivity. The Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) is a valuation technique to quantify lifetime disease burden including both non-fatal health consequences of diseases and premature death. Method. This study estimated the role of the largest leisure center in Spain (GO fit) in averting the burden of five diseases and premature deaths during 2017 as a consequence of the physical activity and exercise programs and services delivered. A preferred model was implemented with a static picture of the burden of disease, without including discounting rate and age-weights. Sensitivity analyses were conducted considering these two variables. Results. The estimation was that GO fit services could have averted a total of 1,165.74 DALYs (10.96 DALYs per 1,000 members) coming from type 2 diabetes (22.62 DALYs), colorectal cancer (81.16 DALYs), breast cancer (48.72 DALYs), stroke (206.15 DALYs), and coronary heart disease (807.10 DALYs). Discussion. These results indicate that programs and services delivered in physical activity leisure centers could help the public health agenda aim of promoting a more active lifestyle and reducing the burden of disease associated with physical inactivity.
Keywords: physical activity, burden of disease, Leisure centers, Mortality, daly
Received: 12 Feb 2025; Accepted: 28 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 JIMENEZ, Nieto, Mayo, Bascones, De Soto Cardenal, Arroyo, Liguori and Davies. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Inés Nieto, Rey Juan Carlos University, Móstoles, Spain
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