Preventing Cardiovascular Disease Among Urban African Americans With a Mobile Health App (the MOYO App): Protocol for a Usability Study

Abstract

<jats:sec> <jats:title>Background</jats:title> <jats:p>Cardiovascular disease (CVD) disparities are a particularly devastating manifestation of health inequity. Despite advancements in prevention and treatment, CVD is still the leading cause of death in the United States. Additionally, research indicates that African American (AA) and other ethnic-minority populations are affected by CVD at earlier ages than white Americans. Given that AAs are the fastest-growing population of smartphone owners and users, mobile health (mHealth) technologies offer the unparalleled potential to prevent or improve self-management of chronic disease among this population.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Objective</jats:title> <jats:p>To address the unmet need for culturally tailored primordial prevention CVD–focused mHealth interventions, the MOYO app was cocreated with the involvement of young people from this priority community. The overall project aims to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a novel smartphone app designed to reduce CVD risk factors among urban-AAs, 18-29 years of age.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Methods</jats:title> <jats:p>The theoretical underpinning will combine the principles of community-based participatory research and the agile software development framework. The primary outcome goals of the study will be to determine the usability, acceptability, and functionality of the MOYO app, and to build a cloud-based data collection infrastructure suitable for digital epidemiology in a disparity population. Changes in health-related parameters over a 24-week period as determined by both passive (eg, physical activity levels, sleep duration, social networking) and active (eg, use of mood measures, surveys, uploading pictures of meals and blood pressure readings) measures will be the secondary outcome. Participants will be recruited from a majority AA “large city” school district, 2 historically black colleges or universities, and 1 urban undergraduate college. Following baseline screening for inclusion (administered in person), participants will receive the beta version of the MOYO app. Participants will be monitored during a 24-week pilot period. Analyses of varying data including social network dynamics, standard metrics of activity, percentage of time away from a given radius of home, circadian rhythm metrics, and proxies for sleep will be performed. Together with external variables (eg, weather, pollution, and socioeconomic indicators such as food access), these metrics will be used to train machine-learning frameworks to regress them on the self-reported quality of life indicators.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Results</jats:title> <jats:p>This 5-year study (2015-2020) is currently in the implementation phase. We believe that MOYO can build upon findings of classical epidemiology and longitudinal studies like the Jackson Heart Study by adding greater granularity to our knowledge of the exposures and behaviors that affect health and disease, and creating a channel for outreach capable of launching interventions, clinical trials, and enhancements of health literacy.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Conclusions</jats:title> <jats:p>The results of this pilot will provide valuable information about community cocreation of mHealth programs, efficacious design features, and essential infrastructure for digital epidemiology among young AA adults.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)</jats:title> <jats:p>DERR1-10.2196/16699</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Interação humano-computador e Letramento digital em saúde utilizando aplicações móveis: Revisão Sistemática

“…O trabalho "Preventing cardiovascular disease among urban african americans with a mobile health app (the MOYO app): Protocol for a usability study" (12) (PubMed) teve como objetivo desenvolver e avaliar a eficácia de um novo aplicativo de smartphone projetado para reduzir os fatores de risco de doenças cardiovasculares entre americanos de origem africana de 18 a 29 anos de idade que moram em cidades. O aplicativo foi desenvolvido utilizando métodos de design participativos baseados na comunidade.…”

“…Em relação aos métodos utilizados para desenvolvimento de aplicativos móveis na área da saúde destaca-se que nos trabalhos (11,12,15,21) utilizaram a metodologia denominada design centrado no usuário dando destaque para participação da comunidade no desenvolvimento dos aplicativos.…”

“…Por sua vez o trabalho (12) teve como objetivo de atingir o público americano de origem africana, residentes em cidades nos Estados Unidos. Neste trabalho o aplicativo foi desenvolvido na área de oncologia.…”

Sign of the times: Community engagement to refine a cardiovascular mHealth intervention through a virtual focus group series during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…In the MOYO study, researchers combined the health belief model and social cognitive theory with a CBPR approach to successfully design a CVH intervention for AA youth. 44 In their mHealth intervention to increase PA among AA women, Rodney and colleagues utilized social cognitive theory mediators to guide the data collection on the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention. Thus, our approach is in line with methods used in other mHealth usability studies for interventions among AAs 12 , 44 , 45 and represents a model of a successful community–academic partnership.…”

Digital Health App to Address Disparate HIV Outcomes Among Black Women Living in Metro-Atlanta: Protocol for a Multiphase, Mixed Methods Pilot Feasibility Study

“…As SCT-MC has been used in numerous studies to explore the behavioral acceptance of communications interventions among minority communities, the case can be made for using SCT-MC to evaluate feasibility within a group that has been relatively understudied. Research guided by this framework has identified the benefits of using mobile apps to deliver evidence-based health messaging and training [ 32 , 33 ].…”