Our study confirms the importance of assessing individual differences as potential moderators of tailored health interventions. For those who prefer an autonomy-supportive style of communication, tailoring on values and other motivational constructs can enhance message impact and perceived relevance.

Objective-Many targeted health interventions have been developed and tested with African American (AA) populations; however, AAs are a highly heterogeneous group. One characteristic that varies across AAs is Ethnic Identity (EI). Despite the recognition that AAs are heterogeneous with regard to EI, little research has been conducted on how to incorporate EI into the design of health messages and programs.Design-This randomized trial tested whether tailoring a print-based fruit and vegetable (F & V) intervention based on individual EI would enhance program impact beyond that of social cognitive tailoring alone. AA adults were recruited from two integrated healthcare delivery systems, one based in the Detroit Metro area and the other in the Atlanta Metro area, and then randomized to receive three newsletters focused on F & V behavior change over three months. One set of newsletters was tailored only on demographic, behavioral, and social cognitive variables (control condition) whereas the other (experimental condition) was additionally tailored on EI.

Background Attrition, or dropout, is a problem faced by many online health interventions, potentially threatening the inferential value of online randomized controlled trials.Objective In the context of a randomized controlled trial of an online weight management intervention, where 85% of the baseline participants were lost to follow-up at the 12-month measurement, the objective was to examine the effect of nonresponse on key outcomes and explore ways to reduce attrition in follow-up surveys.Methods A sample of 700 nonrespondents to the 12-month online follow-up survey was randomly assigned to a mail or telephone nonresponse follow-up survey. We examined response rates in the two groups, costs of follow-up, reasons for nonresponse, and mode effects. We ran several logistic regression models, predicting response or nonresponse to the 12-month online survey as well as predicting response or nonresponse to the follow-up survey.ResultsWe analyzed 210 follow-up respondents in the mail and 170 in the telephone group. Response rates of 59% and 55% were obtained for the telephone and mail nonresponse follow-up surveys, respectively. A total of 197 respondents (51.8%) gave reasons related to technical issues or email as a means of communication, with older people more likely to give technical reasons for noncompletion; 144 (37.9%) gave reasons related to the intervention or the survey itself. Mail follow-up was substantially cheaper: We estimate that the telephone survey cost about US $34 per sampled case, compared to US $15 for the mail survey. The telephone responses were subject to possible social desirability effects, with the telephone respondents reporting significantly greater weight loss than the mail respondents. The respondents to the nonresponse follow-up did not differ significantly from the 12-month online respondents on key outcome variables.ConclusionsMail is an effective way to reduce attrition to online surveys, while telephone follow-up might lead to overestimating the weight loss for both the treatment and control groups. Nonresponse bias does not appear to be a significant factor in the conclusions drawn from the randomized controlled trial.

A novel system that has enabled the measurement of single-cell oxygen consumption rates is presented. The experimental apparatus includes a temperature controlled environmental chamber, an array of microwells etched in glass, and a lid actuator used to seal cells in the microwells. Each microwell contains an oxygen sensitive platinum phosphor sensor used to monitor the cellular metabolic rates. Custom automation software controls the digital image data collection for oxygen sensor measurements, which are analyzed using an image-processing program to yield the oxygen concentration within each microwell versus time. Two proof-of-concept experiments produced oxygen consumption rate measurements for A549 human epithelial lung cancer cells of 5.39 and 5.27 fmol/min/cell, closely matching published oxygen consumption rates for bulk A549 populations.

ObjectiveTo develop an innovative and effective educational intervention to inform patients about the need for osteoporosis treatment and to determine factors associated with its online uptake.MethodsPostmenopausal women with a prior fracture and not currently using osteoporosis therapy were eligible to be included in the Activating Patients at Risk for OsteoPOroSis (APROPOS). Four nominal groups with a total of 18 racially/ethnically diverse women identified osteoporosis treatment barriers. We used the Information, Motivation, Behavior Skills conceptual model to develop a direct-to-patient intervention to mitigate potentially modifiable barriers to osteoporosis therapy. The intervention included videos tailored by participants’ race/ethnicity and their survey responses: ranked barriers to osteoporosis treatment, deduced barriers to treatment, readiness to behavior change, and osteoporosis treatment history. Videos consisted of “storytelling” narratives, based on osteoporosis patient experiences and portrayed by actresses of patient-identified race/ethnicity. We also delivered personalized brief phone calls followed by an interactive voice-response phone messages aimed to promote uptake of the videos.ResultsTo address the factors associated with online intervention uptake, we focused on participants assigned to the intervention arm (n = 1342). These participants were 92.9% Caucasian, with a mean (SD) age 74.9 (8.0) years and the majority (77.7%) had some college education. Preference for natural treatments was the barrier ranked #1 by most (n = 130; 27%), while concern about osteonecrosis of the jaw was the most frequently reported barrier (at any level; n = 322; 67%). Overall, 28.1% (n = 377) of participants in the intervention group accessed the videos online. After adjusting for relevant covariates, the participants who provided an email address had 6.07 (95% CI 4.53–8.14) higher adjusted odds of accessing their online videos compared to those who did not.ConclusionWe developed and implemented a novel tailored multi-modal intervention to improve initiation of osteoporosis therapy. An email address provided on the survey was the most important factor independently associated with accessing the intervention online. The design and uptake of this intervention may have implications for future studies in osteoporosis or other chronic diseases.