Barriers and facilitators to physical activity participation in adults living with type 1 diabetes: a scoping review protocol.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this scoping review is to identify and map barriers to and facilitators of physical activity in adults living with type 1 diabetes (T1D).

INTRODUCTION: Physical activity is crucial to the day-to-day management of T1D and in the prevention of diabetes-related complications. Despite these benefits, people living with T1D have higher inactivity rates than those in the general population. Identifying barriers and facilitators to physical activity, specific to the T1D population, may help explain this discrepancy.

INCLUSION CRITERIA: This scoping review will include articles describing adults aged 18 years or over, living with T1D in any care setting. Included literature will focus on the key concepts under review: barriers to or facilitators of physical activity participation. Literature examining efficacy of strategies to manage blood glucose levels for physical activity will not be included.

METHODS: All sources of information will be reviewed, including peer-reviewed, published and unpublished literature. Database search limits will be applied to include articles written in English, involving human participants and published between 1996 and February 2019. Once all records are identified, duplicates will be removed. Remaining records will be subject to title and abstract screening where articles will be excluded if they clearly meet at least one exclusion criteria. All remaining full-text articles will be assessed for eligibility against inclusion and exclusion criteria. Included articles will undergo critical appraisal before being synthesized, charted and discussed.