BackgroundDespite the significant health benefits of regular physical activity, approximately half of American adults, particularly women and minorities, do not meet the current physical activity recommendations. Mobile phone technologies are readily available, easily accessible and may provide a potentially powerful tool for delivering physical activity interventions. However, we need to understand how to effectively apply these mobile technologies to increase and maintain physical activity in physically inactive women. The purpose of this paper is to describe the study design and protocol of the mPED (mobile phone based physical activity education) randomized controlled clinical trial that examines the efficacy of a 3-month mobile phone and pedometer based physical activity intervention and compares two different 6-month maintenance interventions.MethodsA randomized controlled trial (RCT) with three arms; 1) PLUS (3-month mobile phone and pedometer based physical activity intervention and 6-month mobile phone diary maintenance intervention), 2) REGULAR (3-month mobile phone and pedometer based physical activity intervention and 6-month pedometer maintenance intervention), and 3) CONTROL (pedometer only, but no intervention will be conducted). A total of 192 physically inactive women who meet all inclusion criteria and successfully complete a 3-week run-in will be randomized into one of the three groups. The mobile phone serves as a means of delivering the physical activity intervention, setting individualized weekly physical activity goals, and providing self-monitoring (activity diary), immediate feedback and social support. The mobile phone also functions as a tool for communication and real-time data capture. The primary outcome is objectively measured physical activity.DiscussionIf efficacy of the intervention with a mobile phone is demonstrated, the results of this RCT will be able to provide new insights for current behavioral sciences and mHealth.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov#:NCTO1280812
Checklist. The contributors each provide a short history of the development of their respective instruments, the administrative process, benchmarking features, and validation research. They also offer some resources and guidance to using their scorecard. In conclusion, Dr Roemer discusses the evolution of organizational health scorecards since the 2013 issue on this topic, offers a summary comparing and contrasting the featured tools, and provides guidance on how to select the best tool to fit an organization's needs. As someone who transitioned from health promotion practitioner to outcomes researcher out of a desire to improve the effectiveness of health promotion efforts in the field, I highly recommend any one of these scorecards for like-minded professionals. Although some organizations balk at the effort involved in completing these scorecards, the relatively small investment of time is worth the effort to ensure the resources devoted to health promotion is money well spent.
Background: Comprehensive workplace wellness programs (CWWPs) have the potential to improve the heart health of the US workforce. To accelerate the adoption of these programs, the American Heart Association launched the Workplace Health Achievement Index (WHAI). The WHAI is an online scorecard that evaluates a workplace’s culture of health and the aggregate heart health score of its workforce as measured by Life’s Simple 7. Evidence from other workplace scorecards indicate that smaller companies achieve lower scores. Objective: To quantify differences in WHAI scores and score components between smaller (<250 employees) and larger (250+ employees) worksites. Methods: The total WHAI score is derived from 55 structure and process measures across seven best-practice domains and performance metrics based on employee Life’s Simple 7 data. Data from the first WHAI cycle (Feb 1 - June 30, 2016) were analyzed from 239 worksites that provided structure and process information. All data were stratified according to company size (smaller vs. larger). Differences in practice and performance measures were assessed across groups using Pearson chi-square tests or paired t-tests. Results: Overall, 5% of workplaces submitted the required amount of heart health metrics data (≥25% of employees) for eligibility. Smaller companies achieved a lower total WHAI score and lower scores across all domains except for Partnerships (Table 1). Conclusion: Lower WHAI scores for smaller companies may be due to limited resources and capacity to implement CWWPs. Low submission of performance metrics highlights the challenge of including these data in a comprehensive assessment of CWWPs. To meet its 2020 Goals, AHA should consider providing smaller companies with resources to implement CWWPs and develop strategies to increase submission of employee Life’s Simple 7 data. Table 1: Differences in mean AHA Index scores between small and large companies *Sample sizes too small for meaningful comparison.
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