What Progress Looks Like - Turning health and fitness vitals into better outcomes

What does progress look like for the people we serve?

Sometimes it is a measurable improvement in strength or endurance. Sometimes it is climbing the stairs, returning to a favorite activity, or feeling more confident moving through the day. Connecting those measures to the life someone wants to live is central to the work of medical fitness.

Healthcare has long relied on vital signs such as blood pressure and heart rate to show how a patient is doing. Medical fitness has vitals of its own, including strength, endurance, body composition, and balance. These health and fitness vitals give us a shared language for health, independence, and quality of life, and a way to see change over time. The best of them share a few qualities. They can be measured consistently, have reference points that help interpret health risk or functional ability, and are sensitive enough to detect change.

Even then, a number alone is incomplete. We need to understand whether a change reflects real improvement and whether it matters in daily life. A higher leg press test result may reflect increased strength, greater familiarity with the test, or both. Consistent testing and thoughtful interpretation help us tell which is at work. The idea is simple. Progress should be something a person can feel and a clinician can trust.

Collecting information is a starting point. Its value grows when we use it to adjust a program, help people see where they started and where they are headed, and share what we learn with the healthcare professionals who referred them. It helps to ask those clinicians what they want to know. Sometimes it is a measured result. Sometimes it is simply that the patient showed up and finished the program. Many facilities can collect measures. The ones that make the biggest difference close the loop. A few measures, chosen well and tracked consistently, usually serve people better than many measured once.

Exercise oncology brings these ideas into sharp focus. People affected by cancer often experience rapid changes in strength, energy, and confidence during and after treatment. Seeing progress clearly carries extra weight for the participant and for the care team. Specifically, the MFA Exercise Oncology Program Accreditation asks programs to define the outcome measures they track, show how participant results connect to individual goals, and use outcomes to improve over time. It reflects a belief that quality in this field should be visible, shared, and built on evidence. Exercise oncology will have a prominent place at this year’s MFA Annual Conference in Orlando. There, we will officially launch the accreditation, informed by the founding pilot programs that helped test it.

These questions apply across medical fitness, whatever the population. Are we measuring what is most important to the individual? Are we using what we learn to adjust their program? Can we explain their progress clearly to them and, when appropriate, to their healthcare team?

Our recent Medical Fitness Podcast episode, “Health & Fitness Vitals,” explores these ideas further. I invite you to share what you are learning about outcomes in your own programs. Your experience may help another facility take its next step.

The numbers help tell the story. The person gives that story meaning.