Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Jul 27, 2021
Date Accepted: Feb 14, 2022
Digital Health Program Targeting Physical Activity among Adolescents with Overweight and Obesity
ABSTRACT
Background:
Economic incentives can reinforce health behavior engagement. This approach has not been tested for increasing physical activity in adolescents with overweight and obesity via a scalable mobile health (mHealth) intervention.
Objective:
We examined the feasibility and acceptability of a 12-week behavioral economic incentive physical activity mHealth intervention with health coaching, goal setting and self-monitoring for adolescents with overweight or obesity. We also assessed changes in accelerometer-report physical activity, program engagement, and body mass and body fat.
Methods:
Twenty-eight adolescents, aged 13 to 18, with a body mass index ≥ 90th percentile participated in the 12-week, text-delivered behavioral economic incentive physical activity mHealth intervention with health coaching, goal setting and self-monitoring.
Results:
Participant-reported acceptability was high. There were significant improvements in daily active minutes and body fat percentage. Additional physical activity improvements emerged in the sub-sample of participants who were highly adherent.
Conclusions:
The pilot program improved adolescent physical activity with greater improvements in physical activity found in adolescents who routinely engaged in the program. A larger factorial design trial with adaptive daily goals may clarify the role of each intervention component in driving physical activity.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.