Effect of Physical Activity on Drug Expenditures for the Physical and Mental Health of Primary Care Users

Abstract

The primary and secondary objectives of this article are, respectively, to measure the effect of habitual physical activity on total medication expenditures and on expenditures specifically related to psychotropic drugs among primary healthcare users in a large Brazilian city. This cross-sectional study with a retrospective component was conducted using Propensity Score Matching (PSM). PSM is a robust and widely utilized method in studies evaluating the impact of public policies, particularly in observational data settings where randomization is infeasible. Medication expenditures and habitual physical activity data referring to the past 12 months were collected from 250 users of both sexes, aged over 40 years, across seven primary healthcare units. The average medication expenditure was USD 6.33 (95% CI: -206.64 to -31.02), and for psychotropics, USD 0.63 (95% CI: -217.75 to -11.87). The effect of physical activity on expenditures showed that more active individuals spent on average USD 34.83 less on all medications and USD 4.34 less on psychotropics compared to less active individuals. The findings of this study reinforce the importance of the physical activity as a health promotion strategy and as a means to reduce public health expenditures.

Keywords: Unified Health System (SUS); health economics and organizations; physical activity; primary healthcare.