mHealth Research Daily with Tim Bredrup
Today, approximately 50% of U.S. adults do not meet the recommended levels of physical activity, particularly women and minorities.
Although mobile technologies are promising tools for delivering physical activity interventions, it’s necessary to understand how to effectively apply them in efforts to increase and maintain physical activity in physically inactive women.
To address this need, researchers at University of California in San Francisco have designed a mobile phone based physical activity education (mPED) clinical trial that examines the effectiveness of a mobile phone and pedometer based physical activity intervention.
192 physically inactive women who meet all inclusion criteria will be randomized into one of these three groups of study:
- Three-month mobile phone and pedometer based physical activity intervention and six-month mobile phone diary maintenance intervention.
- Three-month mobile phone and pedometer based physical activity intervention and six-month pedometer maintenance intervention.
- Control group with pedometer only, no intervention will be provided.
“The mobile phone serves as a means of delivering the physical activity intervention, setting individualized weekly physical activity goals, and providing self-monitoring (activity diary), immediate feedback and social support,” the researchers explain.
If the mobile phone interventions prove to be effective, results of studies like these will be able to bridge the gap towards new insights for current behavioral sciences and mHealth.
Authors: Fukuoka Y, Komatsu J, Suarez L, Vittinghoff E, Haskell W, Noorishad T, Pham K.
Institution: Institute for Health & Aging, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco
Original Abstract: Pubmed
