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Feasibility and Pilot Testing of Mobile Health Apps to Supplement 2 Healthy Lifestyle Interventions in Chronic
Shannon B Juengst1, Evan McShan, Michael Conley
1Departments of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (Drs Juengst and Messrs Conley and Luu) and Applied Clinical Research (Dr Juengst), University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas; North Texas Traumatic Brain Injury Model System, Dallas, Texas (Drs Juengst and Driver and Ms McShan); and Baylor Scott and White Research Institute, Dallas, and Baylor Scott & White Institute for Rehabilitation, Dallas, Texas (Ms McShan and Dr Driver).
Objectives:
To determine the feasibility of mobile health (mHealth) apps for enhancing participation of people with chronic traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the Group Lifestyle Balance (GLB-TBI) weight loss intervention and Brain Health Group (BHG-TBI) active control intervention.
Setting:
Community.
Participants:
n = 56 overweight/obese adults with moderate-severe TBI.
Design:
The GLB-TBI is a 12-month group- and community-based program to promote healthy eating and physical activity. The BHG-TBI is a 12-month group- and community-based program to promote general brain health, designed as an active control condition matched on time, structure, and perceived benefit to the GLB-TBI. In a randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of the GLB-TBI for weight loss, participants used a group-specific mHealth app providing daily tips customized according to their intervention allocation.
Main Measures:
Compliance (percentage of daily prompts read and completed) and participant-reported satisfaction and usability.
Results:
In conjunction with relevant stakeholders, we developed the content and structure of the GLB-TBI and BHG-TBI apps based on core curriculum components. We incorporated cognitive strategies (app notifications) to address potential cognitive impairment common after TBI. Both apps delivered brief daily educational and motivational "tips" derived directly from their respective curricula. Daily use of the apps varied greatly across participants, with most participants who used the apps completing 10% to 50% of daily content. Participants found the apps to be easy to use, but only some found them helpful. App use was substantially different for those who participated in the intervention during (2020) versus before (2019) the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conclusions:
Although enhancing an intensive lifestyle intervention with mHealth technology may be helpful, further refinement is needed to optimize the frequency and delivery methods of mHealth content. Although one might expect remote app use to have been higher during the pandemic, we observed the opposite, potentially due to less hands-on training and ongoing support to use the app and/or general technology fatigue with social distancing.
