e- & mHealth SIG Newsletter

Welcome to Our May Newsletter

A glimmer of sunshine, a façade of warm weather, as April gives way to May, we are all ‘planting our gardens and believing in a tomorrow.’¹ What better way to give way to warmth and celebrate meeting in person, than to confer for the ISBNPA Annual Meeting 2022 in the world’s sunniest region – Phoenix, Arizona.  

In this newsletter, we discuss virtual health assistants in the featured article by Dr. Curtis, showcase the highlights of the e-&mHealth sessions during the ISBNPA 2022 Annual Meeting and provide you with news of our most recent e-&mhealth publications. 

Finally, we thank Lee Ashton for his service to the SIG on the social media team and Megan Whatnall for her service on the membership team and wish them both well in their new roles!

So, go ahead and open your little box of sunshine as we welcome you back to in-person events!

Your Co-Chair,

Mavra Ahmed, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Nutritional Sciences

Joannah and Brian Lawson Centre for Child Nutrition

University of Toronto, Canada

¹Quote by Audrey Hepburn

Featured Article

Meet the Lead Author: Rachel Curtis

Dr. Curtis is an Early Career Research Fellow based in the Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition and Activity (ARENA) at the University of South Australia. With a background in psychology, her research focuses on improving people's health and well-being through health behaviour change. Her research aims to understand psychological and environmental risk factors for unhealthy behaviours, such as poor diet and physical inactivity, and to develop innovative programs to help people make healthy lifestyle changes.

Q&A with Dr. Curtis:

How did the paper idea come up?

• I recently worked on a project developing and evaluating a physical activity and dietary intervention delivered via an AI virtual health assistant. Link to article.
• During the design phase, we found there were limited resources available to guide our decision-making around things like visual characteristics and language style. We thought that other researchers designing virtual health assistants might also find a review of the literature to be helpful.

What tips do you have for future researchers who would like to use virtual health assistants?

• There is exciting potential to use virtual health assistants to deliver health information and programs in a way that is personalized, convenient and engaging.
• The most effective design will likely depend on the specific purpose of the virtual health assistant and who it is being made for.
• Although we can make some preliminary design recommendations, formative research with the target user group will be very important.

Besides this awesome paper, what else have you been up to recently?

• I’m involved in a novel cohort study "Annual Rhythms in Adults' Lifestyle and Health" which has used Fitbit devices to track 24-hour activity behaviours and weight in adults over a year.
• We were able to use preliminary data to examine lifestyle changes during COVID-19 restrictions and have many more interesting analyses planned. Link to article.

ISBNPA 2022

e- & mHealth Highlights at ISBNPA 2022

Times are in Mountain Standard Time

Thursday, May 19th

• 8:30-9:45 - S.1.04 - Ecological momentary assessment in physical activity and sedentary behavior research: Evidence, challenges and opportunities
• 12:05-13:20 - e-&mHealth SIG Meeting
• 14:35-16:05 - O.1.04 - Apps, games, social media #OhMy
• 16:20-17:35 - S.1V.3 - Do nature images influence food choice and product perceptions in online shopping environments?

Friday, May 20th

• 16:55-18:10 - S.2.20 - Nutrition mHealth apps: Innovative tools to empower health behaviour modification

Saturday, May 21st

• 8:30 - 9:45 - O.3.20 - Reaching and intervening underrepresented populations using e-&mhealth

Theory and Development

• The Community Preventive Services Task Force. Guide to Community Preventive Services. Nutrition and physical activity: Community-based digital health and telephone interventions to increase healthy eating and physical activity. 2022. Click here
• Curtis, R.G., et al., Improving user experience of virtual health assistants: Scoping review. J Med Internet Res, 2021;23(12): p. e31737. Click here
• Castro, R., et al., What are we measuring when we evaluate digital interventions for improving lifestyle? A scoping meta-review. Front Public Health, 2022;9. Click here
• Junker, M., et al., Value of normative belief in intention to use workplace health promotion apps. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak, 2022;22(1): p. 30-30. Click here
• Short CE, Smit ES, Crutzen R. Measuring Psychological Constructs in computer-tailored interventions: Novel possibilities to reduce participant burden and increase engagement. European Health Psychologist 22 (4), 801-815. Click here

Diet / Nutrition

• Vasiloglou, M. F., Marcano, I., Lizama, S., Papathanail, I., Spanakis, E. K., Mougiakakou, S. Multimedia data-based mobile applications for dietary assessment. J diabetes Sci Technol, 2022. Click here
• Nuijten, R., et al., Pilot evaluation of the impact of lottery-based incentives on engagement levels of male low SES vocational students with an mHealth app. Front Digit Health, 2021;3: p. 748588. Click here
• Lugones-Sánchez, C., et al., Effect of a multicomponent mHealth intervention on the composition of diet in a population with overweight and obesity—Randomized clinical trial EVIDENT 3. Nutrients, 2022;14(2). Click here
• David, C.N.d., et al., The effect of mobile health focused on diet and lifestyle on blood pressure: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Eur J Prev Cardiol, 2022: p. zwac017. Click here

Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior

• Staiano AE, Newton RL Jr, Beyl RA, Kracht CL, Hendrick CA, Viverito M, Webster EK. mHealth Intervention for motor skills: A randomized controlled trial. Pediatrics, 2022;149(5): e2021053362. Click here
• Schoeppe S, Duncan MJ, Plotnikoff RC, Mummery WK, Rabar A, Alley S, To Q, Short C, Vandelanotte C. Acceptability, usefulness, and satisfaction with a web-based video-tailored physical activity intervention: The TaylorActive randomised controlled trial. J Sport Health Sci, 2022;11(2): p. 133-144. Click here
• Gorny, A.W., W.C.D. Chee, and F. Müller-Riemenschneider. Active use and engagement in an mHealth initiative among young men with obesity: Mixed methods study. JMIR Form Res, 2022;6(1): e33798. Click here
• Stephenson, A., et al., The "Worktivity" mHealth intervention to reduce sedentary behaviour in the workplace: A feasibility cluster randomised controlled pilot study. BMC public health, 2021;21(1): p. 1416-1416. Click here
• Mönninghoff, A., et al., Long-term effectiveness of mHealth physical activity interventions: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Med Internet Res, 2021;23(4): e26699. Click here
• Jung, J. and I. Cho. Promoting physical activity and weight loss with mHealth interventions among workers: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2022;10(1): p. e30682-e30682. Click here 

Sleep

• Liao, Y. and K.K. Brown. Usage of digital health tools and perception of mHealth intervention for physical activity and sleep in black women. Int J Environ Res Public Health, 2022;19(3). Click here
• Mokaya, M., et al., Clinical and patient-centered implementation outcomes of mHealth interventions for type 2 diabetes in low-and-middle income countries: A systematic review. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 2022; 19(1): p. 1. Click here 
• Spanhel, K., et al., Engaging refugees with a culturally adapted digital intervention to improve sleep: A randomized controlled pilot trial. Front Psychiatry, 2022;13. Click here

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2021-2022 SIG Committee Members

Chair: Andre Matthias Müller, SIN

Co-Chair: Mavra Ahmed, CAN

Secretary: Chelsea Mauch, AUS

Past Chair: Camille Short, AUS

Newsletter: Amanda Staiano, USA; Zenong Yin, USA; Chelsea Kracht, USA

Social Media: Claire Gough, AUS

Awards: Maria Vasiloglou, CHE

Fellows: Corneel Vandelanotte, AUS, Carol Maher, AUS

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