Perceived barriers to physical activity for colorectal cancer survivors.

<bold>Purpose: </bold>Promoting physical activity among cancer survivors is a high priority. Understanding barriers to physical activity provides an evidence base to inform relevant strategies for doing so.<bold>Methods: </bold>Telephone interviews were conducted with colorectal cancer survivors at 5 (n = 538) and 12 months post-diagnosis (n = 403). We used an ecological model of health behaviour to classify participants' perceived barriers to physical activity into four sub-categories: physical environment, social environment, personal attributes, and disease-specific barriers.<bold>Results: </bold>Disease-specific barriers were perceived as the greatest challenge to colorectal cancer survivors being more physically active, closely followed by personal attributes. The physical environment presented the least salient perceived barriers; however, the physical environment was most closely associated with achieving sufficient levels of physical activity at 5 months post-diagnosis. The difficulties most frequently reported by participants at both time points were belief that they were already active enough, not feeling well enough to be physically active, and experiencing fatigue.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>These findings suggest potential points for intervention to influence physical activity among colorectal cancer survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]