A Refined Mobile Health Intervention (SMARTFAMILY2.0) to Promote Physical Activity and Healthy Eating in a Family...

Area of Science:

• Mobile health (mHealth) interventions
• Behavior change theories
• Family-based health promotion

Background:

• Limited evidence on mHealth app effectiveness for behavior change in children and adolescents.
• Importance of social contexts, like family dynamics, in designing mHealth interventions.
• Need for family-centered approaches in digital health.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and refine the SMARTFAMILY (SF) app for physical activity (PA) and healthy eating (HE) in families.
• Enhance SF app design, usability, gamification, health literacy, and adaptive interventions.
• Evaluate the SF2.0 app in a collective family setting.

Main Methods:

• Cluster-randomized controlled trial of the SF2.0 app over 3 weeks.
• Intervention group used the app, control group received no treatment.
• Measured PA (self-report, accelerometry), fruit and vegetable intake (FVI), motivation, self-efficacy, and family health climate.

Main Results:

• No significant increase in PA observed in the intervention group.
• Significant improvements in FVI diary, joint PA, and joint family meals for the intervention group.
• 55 families recruited; 3 families withdrew before baseline.

Conclusions:

• The SF2.0 app showed positive effects on FVI, joint PA, and joint meals within families.
• mHealth interventions for whole-family behavior change are rare and yield mixed results.
• Future research should focus on inactive populations and enhance engagement features for primary prevention.